Social learning has been shown to be an evolutionarily adaptive strategy, but it can be implemented via many different cognitive mechanisms. The adaptive advantage of social learning depends crucially on the ability of each learner to obtain relevant and accurate information from informants. The source of informants' knowledge is a particularly…

The structure of natural languages give rise to many dependencies in the linear sequences of words, and within words themselves. Detecting these dependencies is arguably critical for young children in learning the underlying structure of their language. There is considerable evidence that human adults and infants are sensitive to the statistical…

Feedback is highly contingent on behavior if it eventually becomes easy to predict, and weakly contingent on behavior if it remains difficult or impossible to predict even after learning is complete. Many studies have demonstrated that humans and nonhuman animals are highly sensitive to feedback contingency, but no known studies have examined how…

While researchers have often sought to understand the learning curve in terms of multiple component processes, few studies have measured and mathematically modeled these processes on a complex task. In particular, there remains a need to reconcile how abrupt changes in strategy use can co-occur with gradual changes in task completion time. Thus,…

Additive Factors Model (AFM) and Performance Factors Analysis (PFA) are two popular models of student learning that employ logistic regression to estimate parameters and predict performance. This is in contrast to Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT) which uses a Hidden Markov Model formalism. While all three models tend to make similar predictions,…

The changes of learning environments and the advancement of learning theories have increasingly demanded for feedback that can describe learning progress trajectories. Effective assessment should be able to evaluate how learners acquire knowledge and develop problem solving skills. Additionally, it should identify what issues these learners have…