Sign-tracking is a form of autoshaping where animals develop conditioned responding directed toward stimuli predictive of an outcome even though the outcome is not contingent on the animal's behavior. Sign-tracking behaviors are thought to arise out of the attribution of incentive salience (i.e., motivational value) to reward-predictive cues. It…

The present study assessed the effects of a distinct visual stimulus (a light) associated with each component of a four-component chain of nonsense syllables. When these added lights were used to train the chains of nonsense syllables, speed of acquisition was unaffected, but errors were reduced, loss of previously acquired responses was reduced,…

Explores the effect of stimulus familiarity on the spatial primacy performance of normal and retarded children. Assumes that serial recall tasks reflect spatial memory rather than verbal rehearsal. (BD)

A theory of practice in high-proficiency skills such as speech production is proposed, involving activation of a hierarchy of nodes in serial order within an output system of behavior. Increased flexibility with practice, response mechanism transfer in skills, motor equivalence, automaticity, and speed-accuracy trade-off are discussed. (Author/CM)

Tasks administered to sixty females 60-120 months of age show that it is possible to test for Piagetian logic by using problems structured in a social context and also suggest that the order of acquisition of logical operations with social stimuli is consistent with the order which has been established with the use of physical stimuli. (Author/CS)

The author initially cites the associationistic position of Spiker and the perceptual learning position of E. Gibson and concludes that the existing data does not clearly support either hypothesis. He describes a new approach designed to test these explanations of the role of verbal pretraining on subsequent discrimination learning. It consists of…

Two studies examined serial recall process of first-grade Canadian children from inner-city and suburban backgrounds. In the first study significant differences were found in the serial position curve of recall. Suburban children recalled a greater number of early-presented, primacy items, while inner-city children who had equivalent span…

A primary purpose of the present study was the evaluation of possible differences in process between the recall and anticipation methods of serial learning. (Author)