Biomedical subjects

J M Fincham

Publications and source records attributed to J M Fincham.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1999

Practice and retention: a unifying analysis.

What is the strength of a memory trace that has received various practices at times tj in the past? The strength accumulation equation proposes the following: strength = sigma tj-d, where the summation is over the practices of the trace. This equation predicts both the power law of practice and the power law of retention. This article reports the fits of the predictions of this equation to 5 experiments. Across these experiments, participants received as many as 240 trials of practice distributed over intervals as long as 400 days. The experiments also varied whether participants were just practicing retrieving an item or practicing applying a relatively complex rule. A model based on this equation successfully fit all the data when it was assumed that the passage of psychological time slowed after the experimental session. The strength accumulation equation was compared with other conceptions of the retention function and the relationship of the retention function to the practice function.

Humans↗

PubMed1997

The role of examples and rules in the acquisition of a cognitive skill.

In 3 experiments, participants memorized 8 examples, each exemplifying a different rule. Participants were asked to extend these rules to new examples. They practiced applications of the rules to examples over a period of 4 days (Experiment 1) or 5 days (Experiments 2 and 3). Although these rules were bidirectional, an asymmetry gradually built up such that participants became more facile in using the rules in the practiced direction. Participants also showed an advantage when the initial study example was repeated or when test examples were repeated. It is argued that skill acquisition involves development of a complex set of strategies based on use of rules and retrieval of examples. Four overlapping stages of skill acquisition are described.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed1996

Categorization and sensitivity to correlation.

Three categorization experiments were run in which participants saw a set of stimuli that varied on 4 continuous dimensions. Participants first categorized the stimuli and tried to predict some of the dimensions, given the values of others. Experiment 1 used iris-like stimuli based on the descriptions of R. A. Fisher's (1936) taxonomic descriptions. It showed that having participants categorize the stimuli was essential to being able to perform the prediction task and that merely observing the stimuli was not sufficient. It also indicated that participants could use within-category as well as between-category correlations for predictions. Experiments 2 and 3 used stimuli with artificial variations of values. Participants processed categories that had different within-category correlations. Participants' behavior could be predicted as a combination of sensitivity to within-category correlation and bias about the sign of the correlations. These results were fit to the rational model of categorization (J. R. Anderson, 1991) and to an exemplar model (R. M. Nosofsky, 1988).

Adult↗

PubMed1994

Acquisition of procedural skills from examples.

Three experiments were run in which Ss first memorized examples of input-output pairs and then generated the outputs for a series of new inputs by analogy to the original examples. Ss first performed these mappings by explicit analogy to an example, but with practice they learned to make these input-output mappings directly without reference to the examples. Ss sped up as a power function of practice over a day (Experiment 1) or days (Experiments 2 and 3). Ss developed a directional asymmetry such that they were slower to calculate the input from the output than the output from the input (whereas initially they had not been). Ss showed similar speed up in their ability to recall the original examples but did not show the same directional asymmetry. Initially, there was some transfer from practicing the procedure to recalling the examples, but this diminished over days.

Cognition↗