The assumption that subjects compare symbolic stimulus magnitudes with respect to a reference point was examined. Results indicate that subjects can strategically vary the process for comparing stimuli to a reference point and can perform various types of analog arithmetic using the linear number scale or a nonlinear scale of subjective digit…

The developmental hypothesis that behavioral differences between subjects in the two temporal separation conditions would decline over grades was supported by the data. (Author)

Of interest in the present experiment was the demonstration of the immediate direct effect of anticipation interval: the performance advantage of a chaining-paradigm group over a nonchaining-paradigm group was lost completely when the anticipation interval dropped from 4 seconds to 1 second. (Authors)

The efficacy of noncontingent reinforcement with variable-time (VT) schedules was evaluated by comparing the effects of VT and fixed-time (FT) reinforcement schedules with two individuals with moderate to severe mental retardation and severe behavior problems. Both VT and FT schedules were effective in reducing problem behavior. (Contains…

Recent experiments suggest that the effects of drugs of abuse on the discrimination of the passage of time may differ for experimenter-imposed and subject-produced events. The current experiment examined this suggestion by determining the effects of morphine on the discrimination of interresponse times (IRTs). Pigeons pecked a center key on a…

Attempts to examine the effects of variations in relative conditioned reinforcement rate on choice have been confounded by changes in rates of primary reinforcement or changes in the value of the conditioned reinforcer. To avoid these problems, this experiment used concurrent observing responses to examine sensitivity of choice to relative…

Pigeons' choice in concurrent chains can adapt to rapidly changing contingencies. Grace, Bragason, and McLean (2003) found that relative initial-link response rate was sensitive to the immediacy ratio in the current session when one of the terminal-link fixed-interval schedules was changed daily according to a pseudorandom binary sequence (e.g.,…

Learning and memory are central topics in behavioral neuroscience, and inbred mice strains are widely investigated. However, operant conditioning techniques are not as extensively used in this field as they should be, given the effectiveness of the methodology of the experimental analysis of behavior. In the present study, male C57Bl/6 mice,…

Young infants are very sensitive to feature distribution information in the environment. However, existing work suggests that they do not make use of correlation information to form certain perceptual categories until at least 7 months of age. We suggest that the failure to use correlation information is a by-product of familiarization procedures…

The purpose of this paper is to describe a software package that can be used for performing such routine tasks as controlling listening experiments (e.g., simple labeling, discrimination, sentence intelligibility, and magnitude estimation), recording responses and response latencies, analyzing and plotting the results of those experiments,…

We present three studies in mobile learning. First, we polled 333 Japanese university students regarding their use of mobile devices. One hundred percent reported owning a mobile phone. Ninety-nine percent send e-mail on their mobile phones, exchanging some 200 e-mail messages each week. Sixty-six percent e-mail peers about classes; 44% e-mail for…

This article describes the light-based science circus the authors developed and tested with a fifth-grade class at Blackwell Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia. A science circus is a set of activities done in any order that together illustrate complementary properties of a science topic. As in a traditional circus, several "performances"…

An experiment was performed to investigate the effects of practice and spacing on retention of Japanese-English vocabulary paired associates. The relative benefit of spacing increased with increased practice and with longer retention intervals. Data were fitted with an activation-based memory model, which proposes that each time an item is…

Item content-relevance is an important consideration for researchers when developing scales used to measure psychological constructs. Aiken (1980) proposed a statistic, "V," that can be used to summarize item content-relevance ratings obtained from a panel of expert judges. This article proposes the application of the Score confidence interval to…

The typical finding from research on metacomprehension is that accuracy is quite low. However, recent studies have shown robust accuracy improvements when judgments follow certain generation tasks (summarizing or keyword listing) but only when these tasks are performed at a delay rather than immediately after reading (K. W. Thiede & M. C. M.…