Six experiments were conducted with graduate students to assess resurgence of compound (i.e., multi-step) academic responding under free operant procedures. Participants learned two different interobserver agreement (IOA) methods -- compound behaviors -- through instructional phases before beginning the experimental phases. Each experiment…

This study investigated how emotional valence of a perceived emotional state impacted performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task (RMET) in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) controls. Valence of items on the RMET, Adult (RMET-A) and Child (RMET-C) versions, was first classified in a survey of…

Human attention can be guided by semantic information conveyed by individual objects in the environment. Over time, we learn to allocate attention resources towards stimuli that are behaviourally relevant to ongoing action, leading to attention capture by meaningful peripheral stimuli. A common example includes, while driving, stimuli that imply a…

Classroom research has demonstrated the capacity for significantly influencing student learning by engaging students in evaluation of previously submitted work as an intentional priming exercise for learning; we call this experience "Learning by Evaluating" (LbE). Expanding on current LbE research, we set forth to investigate the impact…

The aim of this study was to model a situation that induced choice between following two incompatible rules, each associated with a different rate of reinforcement. In Experiment 1, eight undergraduate students were exposed to a two-component multiple schedule (training). In each component, there was a concurrent variable interval (VI)-extinction…

Vocal exchanges are often comprised of responses under multiple sources of stimulus control. For example, a picture may contain multiple components, and an instructor may ask a learner to respond differentially to questions about the picture (e.g., "who," "what," "where," "color," "number,"…

In rule-based (RB) category-learning tasks, the optimal strategy is a simple explicit rule, whereas in information-integration (II) tasks, the optimal strategy is impossible to describe verbally. This study investigates the effects of two different category properties on learning difficulty in category learning tasks--namely, linear separability…

Recent work in reinforcement learning has demonstrated a choice preference for an option that has a lower probability of reward (A) when paired with an alternative option that has a higher probability of reward (C), if A has been experienced more frequently than C (the frequency effect). This finding is critical as it is inconsistent with…

Massive studies have explored biological motion (BM) crowds processing for their remarkable social significance, primarily focused on uniformly distributed ones. However, real-world BM crowds often exhibit hierarchical structures rather than uniform arrangements. How such structured BM crowds are processed remains a subject of inquiry. This study…

This study reports the results of 4 experiments that addressed whether the domains of deictic time and number exert a cross-domain link. Such a link would be consistent with A Theory of Magnitude (i.e., ATOM). In contrast, no link between the two domains would support the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), which assumes that each domain is only…

Objective: Performance of Cognitive Refocusing Treatment for Insomnia (CRT-I) relative to stimulus control treatment (SCT) remains unknown among college students. This pilot trial compared single-session, electronic-based, peer-led CRT-I to SCT, and as well as awareness-based (AC) and no-treatment (NTC) controls. Participants: College students (N…

An argument can be made that integrating mindfulness practices (MPs) into Outdoor Adventure (OA) programming can help students develop and expand on a variety of social and emotional attributes, such as stress reduction, awareness of the present moment, relationship skills, and maintaining psychosocial equilibrium. However, there is a paucity of…

Visual comparisons are pervasive in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction and practice. In previous work, adults' visual comparisons of simple stimuli were faster and more accurate when the layout of a display facilitated alignment of corresponding elements--the "spatial alignment principle" (Matlen et al.,…

We explored a two-stage recognition memory paradigm in which people first make single-item "studied"/"not studied" decisions and then have a chance to correct their errors in forced-choice trials. Each forced-choice trial included one studied word ("target") and one nonstudied word ("lure") that received the…

A classic issue in the cognitive psychology of human category learning has involved the contrast between exemplar and prototype models. However, experimental tests to distinguish the models have relied almost solely on use of artificially-constructed categories composed of simplified stimuli. Here we contrast the predictions from the models in a…