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Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: IV. Some effects of perceptual learning on speech production.

This study investigated the effects of training in/r/-/l/ perceptual identification on /r/-/l/ production by adult Japanese speakers. Subjects were recorded producing English words that contrast /r/ and /l/ before and after participating in an extended period of /r/-/l/ identification training using a high-variability presentation format. All subjects showed significant perceptual learning as a result of the training program, and this perceptual learning generalized to novel items spoken by new talkers. Improvement in the Japanese trainees' /r/-/l/ spoken utterances as a consequence of perceptual training was evaluated using two separate tests with native English listeners. First, a direct comparison of the pretest and post-test tokens showed significant improvement in the perceived rating of /r/ and /l/ productions as a consequence of perceptual learning. Second, the post-test productions were more accurately identified by English listeners than the pretest productions in a two-alternative minimal-pair identification procedure. These results indicate that the knowledge gained during perceptual learning of /r/ and /l/ transferred to the production domain, and thus provides novel information regarding the relationship between speech perception and production.

Adult↗

Visual input and lateralization of brain function in learning in the chick.

Several lines of evidence (biochemical, neuroanatomical, electrophysiological, and behavioural) have indicated a critical role for the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale of the chick forebrain in the acquisition of a passive avoidance response. Previous lesion studies indicated that bilateral or left, but not right, pretraining intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale lesions interfere with the acquisition of this task. We have further analysed this asymmetrical involvement of the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale by use of a monocular learning protocol and intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale lesions (sham, bilateral, or unilateral). The results indicated that there is interocular transfer of information of passive avoidance learning between the two eye systems, with a tendency to be more successful from the right eye system to the left than in the opposite direction. As in binocular conditions, bilateral pretraining intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale lesions impair learning in monocularly trained animals. Unilateral lesions to either left or right monocularly trained experimental animals resulted in amnesia when they were made to the right intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale and the chicks were trained/tested with the left eye open. These results indicate that, although right intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale lesions do not result in amnesia in binocular animals, this region is capable of participating in memory acquisition processes. They also suggest a connection between lateralization of intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale function in passive avoidance learning and the behavioural and structural visual asymmetries known to occur in chicks.

Animals↗

Reducing retroactive interference: an interference analysis.

In 4 experiments on retroactive interference (RI), we varied paired-associate learning lists that produced either appreciable or negligible forgetting. When the category of the stimulus word predicted its response word category, and the response was relatively unique within its category, learning was extremely rapid, and negative transfer and RI were negligible. The more the competing primed items in the predicted response category, the slower the learning and the greater the RI. If cues and responses were unrelated, learning was very slow, and RI was appreciable. Thus, predictive relations that help stimuli retrieve unique responses greatly alter forgetting in RI paradigms.

Adolescent↗

Callosal and cortical contribution to procedural learning.

Acallosal and callosotomized subjects usually show impairments on tasks requiring bilateral interdependent motor control. However, few studies have assessed the ability of these subjects to learn a skill that requires the simultaneous contribution of each hemisphere in its acquisition. The present study examined whether acallosal and callosotomized subjects could learn a visuomotor skill that involved a motor control from either both or a single hemisphere. Eleven adult patients, six acallosal and five callosotomized, participated in this study. Seven of these patients had epileptic foci located in the frontal and/or temporal areas and one of the acallosal patients showed bilateral prefrontal atrophy following surgical removal of an orbitofrontal cyst. The performance of the experimental subjects was compared with that of 11 matched control subjects, on a modified version of a serial reaction time task developed by Nissen and Bullemer (Cogn Psychol 1987; 19: 1-32). This skill acquisition task involved bimanual or unimanual key-pressing responses to a sequence of 10 visual stimuli that was repeated 160 times. A declarative memory task was then performed to assess explicit knowledge of the sequence. None of the experimental subjects learned the task in the bimanual condition. Patients with frontal epileptic foci or orbitofrontal damage also failed to learn the task in the unimanual condition when they were using the hand contralateral to the damaged hemisphere. All other subjects, including the acallosal and callosotomized patients with temporal foci, learned the visuomotor skill as well as their controls in the unimanual condition. In spite of the absence of transfer and interhemispheric integration of procedural learning, some of the acallosal and callosotomized patients were able to learn the sequence explicitly. These findings indicate that the corpus callosum and the frontal cortical areas are important for procedural learning of a visuomotor skill. They also confirm the dissociation described by Squire (Science 1986; 232: 1612-9 and J Cogn Neurosci 1992; 4: 232-43) between the declarative and procedural memory systems and extend this dissociation to processes involving simultaneous bihemispheric co-operation.

Adult↗

Transfer of training in acquiring laparoscopic skills.

BACKGROUND: Building on skills already learned in acquiring more complex or related skills is termed transfer of training (TOT). This study examined the TOT effects of previous open and laparoscopic surgical experience on a laparoscopic training module. STUDY DESIGN: Intracorporeal knot tying was chosen for evaluating TOT among three groups of surgical residents: interns (n = 11) with limited open and laparoscopic surgical experience, junior residents (n = 9) with recent and ongoing open and laparoscopic surgical experience, and senior residents (n = 8) with remote and limited laparoscopic experience but ongoing open surgical experience. After receiving a lecture, demonstration, and written instructions on three knot-tying techniques, residents rotated through three performance stations, one for each technique, over 2 days. After 15 minutes of practice, the residents were videotaped completing a test knot. Time to completion and economy of motion were recorded and analyzed. RESULTS: Junior residents had fewer performance errors than senior residents (reported as mean +/- standard error of the mean) and were significantly faster than interns. No significant differences between interns and senior residents for mean time or error performance were observed. Senior residents did not demonstrate TOT from open surgical experience to laparoscopic knot tying. No significant differences were obtained across the three sessions for errors or for time. CONCLUSION: No evidence was found for TOT from open surgical experience to newly introduced laparoscopic knot-tying techniques or from one skill training session to a different skill session at least 4 hours later. This study indicates that specific minimally invasive surgery training is needed to develop laparoscopic surgery skills.

Clinical Competence↗

The HOCS paradigm shift from disciplinary knowledge (LOCS)--to interdisciplinary evaluative, system thinking (HOCS): what should it take in science-technology-environment-society oriented courses, curricula and assessment?

Given the current world state of affairs, striving for sustainability and the consequent paradigm shift: growth-to-sustainable development, correction-to-prevention and options selection-to-options generation: the corresponding paradigm shift in science-technology-environment-society (STES) education is unavoidable. Accordingly, the essence of the current reform in STES education, worldwide, is a purposed effort to develop students' higher-order cognitive skills (HOCS) capability; i.e., question-asking, critical system thinking, decision making and problem solving, at the expense of the "delivery" of lower-order cognitive skills (LOCS)-oriented knowledge. This means a paradigm shift from the contemporary prevalent LOCS algorithmic teaching to HOCS evaluative learning and HOCS-promoting courses, curricula, teaching strategies and assessment methodologies, leading, hopefully to evaluative thinking and transfer. Following the formulation of selected relevant axioms, major paradigm shift in STES research and education for sustainability have been identified. The consequent shift, in the STES context, from disciplinary to inter- and transdisciplinary learning, in science technology and environmental engineering education is discussed, followed by selected examples of successfully implemented HOCS-promoting courses, and assessment methodologies. It is argued, that transferable "HOCS learning" for sustainability can and should be done.

Clinical Competence↗

Patients with learning difficulties: outcome on peritoneal dialysis.

In the present study, we identified patients who had difficulties learning the minimum knowledge and skills required to carry out peritoneal dialysis (PD), and we compared the outcomes in this subgroup of patients with outcomes in the general PD population. We calculated the mean learning sessions needed by our total PD population during the training period. We then assigned patients to one of two groups according to the number of learning sessions they needed. Patients who required a number of sessions equal to or less than the mean were placed in the "standard learning" group; patients who required more sessions but who reached the minimum knowledge and skills were placed in the "learning difficulties " group. We compared these two groups in terms of age, sex, diabetes status, autonomy to perform PD, family support, education level, residual renal function, and Charlson comorbidity index. Outcomes on PD included time to first peritonitis episode, peritonitis rate, percentage of patients free of peritonitis during follow-up, survival time on PD, and transfer to hemodialysis. Patients with learning difficulties were older and had more comorbidities. Outcomes on PD in the learning difficulties group were similar to those in the standard learning group, except for time to first peritonitis.

Adult↗

Protein ranking by semi-supervised network propagation.

BACKGROUND: Biologists regularly search DNA or protein databases for sequences that share an evolutionary or functional relationship with a given query sequence. Traditional search methods, such as BLAST and PSI-BLAST, focus on detecting statistically significant pairwise sequence alignments and often miss more subtle sequence similarity. Recent work in the machine learning community has shown that exploiting the global structure of the network defined by these pairwise similarities can help detect more remote relationships than a purely local measure. METHODS: We review RankProp, a ranking algorithm that exploits the global network structure of similarity relationships among proteins in a database by performing a diffusion operation on a protein similarity network with weighted edges. The original RankProp algorithm is unsupervised. Here, we describe a semi-supervised version of the algorithm that uses labeled examples. Three possible ways of incorporating label information are considered: (i) as a validation set for model selection, (ii) to learn a new network, by choosing which transfer function to use for a given query, and (iii) to estimate edge weights, which measure the probability of inferring structural similarity. RESULTS: Benchmarked on a human-curated database of protein structures, the original RankProp algorithm provides significant improvement over local network search algorithms such as PSI-BLAST. Furthermore, we show here that labeled data can be used to learn a network without any need for estimating parameters of the transfer function, and that diffusion on this learned network produces better results than the original RankProp algorithm with a fixed network. CONCLUSION: In order to gain maximal information from a network, labeled and unlabeled data should be used to extract both local and global structure.

Algorithms↗

Concreteness and item-to-list context associations in the free recall of items differing in context variability.

Context variability can be defined as the number of preexperimental contexts in which a given concept appears. Following M. Steyvers and K. J. Malmberg's (2003) work, the authors have shown that concepts that are experienced in fewer preexperimental contexts generally are better remembered in episodic memory tasks than concepts that are experienced in a greater number of preexperimental contexts. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that low context variability confers its memorial advantage because of stronger item-to-list context associations as compared with high context variability. Three experiments that use environmental context changes from study to test demonstrate that the low context variability advantage is eliminated when item-to-list context associations are not available because of environmental changes at test. In addition, the low context variability advantage is eliminated when inward processing at study prevents the formation of item-to-list context associations.

Association Learning↗

Lack of shuttlebox avoidance learning in autoimmune BXSB mice: a test of learned helplessness.

1. The authors investigated whether learned helplessness was a possible explanation for the observed learning deficits demonstrated by autoimmune mice in shuttlebox avoidance. If mice were experiencing learned helplessness during the avoidance testing, one would expect this to transfer to other behavioral tests resulting in lower learning scores. 2. One group of BXSB mice was tested in avoidance first, a water version of the Lashley III maze second, and water escape last, while another group was given these tests in the reverse order. 3. Animals who were exposed to avoidance first did not demonstrate any learning deficits in subsequent tests, suggesting that there were no adverse effects of avoidance training on later water maze learning. 4. However, correlations between number of null responses during avoidance learning and two other measures suggest that the null response measure may be an index of a continuum of learned helplessness within the BXSB strain.

Animals↗

Processing similarity does not improve metamemory: evidence against transfer-appropriate monitoring.

The transfer-appropriate monitoring (TAM) hypothesis of metamemory predicts that judgment of learning (JOL) accuracy should improve when conditions during JOLs closely match conditions of the memory test. The authors devised 5 types of delayed JOLs for paired associates and varied them along with the type of memory test (cued recall or recognition). If the TAM hypothesis is correct, JOL and test type should interact to influence metamemory. Contrary to TAM, metamemory accuracy did not improve when JOL and test conditions matched but instead tended to vary according to whether the answer was apparent at time of JOL. Memory test scores and JOL magnitude were both greater when the correct target was evident during JOLs. Overall, the results are largely consistent with a monitoring retrieval view of delayed JOLs and do not support TAM as a viable account of JOL accuracy.

Attention↗

Memories in drosophila heat-box learning.

Learning and memory processes of operant conditioning in the heat-box are analyzed. In a search for conditioning parameters leading to high retention scores, intermittent training is shown to give better results than those of continuous training. Immediate retention tests contain two memory components, a spatial preference for one side of the chamber and a "stay-where-you-are-effect." Intermittent training strengthens the latter. In the second part, memory dynamics is investigated. Flies are trained in one chamber and tested in a second one after a brief reminder training. With this direct transfer, memory scores reflect an associative learning process in the first chamber. To investigate memory retention after extended time periods, indirect transfer experiments are performed. The fly is transferred to a different environment between training and test phases. With this procedure, an aftereffect of the training can still be observed 2 h later. Surprisingly, exposure to the chamber without conditioning also leads to a memory effect in the indirect transfer experiment. This exposure effect reveals a dispositional change that facilitates operant learning during the reminder training. The various memory effects are independent of the mushroom bodies.

Animals↗

Are there representational shifts during category learning?

Early theories of categorization assumed that either rules, or prototypes, or exemplars were exclusively used to mentally represent categories of objects. More recently, hybrid theories of categorization have been proposed that variously combine these different forms of category representation. Our research addressed the question of whether there are representational shifts during category learning. We report a series of experiments that tracked how individual subjects generalized their acquired category knowledge to classifying new critical transfer items as a function of learning. Individual differences were observed in the generalization patterns exhibited by subjects, and those generalizations changed systematically with experience. Early in learning, subjects generalized on the basis of single diagnostic dimensions, consistent with the use of simple categorization rules. Later in learning, subjects generalized in a manner consistent with the use of similarity-based exemplar retrieval, attending to multiple stimulus dimensions. Theoretical modeling was used to formally corroborate these empirical observations by comparing fits of rule, prototype, and exemplar models to the observed categorization data. Although we provide strong evidence for shifts in the kind of information used to classify objects as a function of categorization experience, interpreting these results in terms of shifts in representational systems underlying perceptual categorization is a far thornier issue. We provide a discussion of the challenges of making claims about category representation, making reference to a wide body of literature suggesting different kinds of representational systems in perceptual categorization and related domains of human cognition.

Analysis of Variance↗

Cryptic single-stranded-DNA binding activities of the phage lambda P and Escherichia coli DnaC replication initiation proteins facilitate the transfer of E. coli DnaB helicase onto DNA.

The bacteriophage lambda P and Escherichia coli DnaC proteins are known to recruit the bacterial DnaB replicative helicase to initiator complexes assembled at the phage and bacterial origins, respectively. These specialized nucleoprotein assemblies facilitate the transfer of one or more molecules of DnaB helicase onto the chromosome; the transferred DnaB, in turn, promotes establishment of a processive replication fork apparatus. To learn more about the mechanism of the DnaB transfer reaction, we investigated the interaction of replication initiation proteins with single-stranded DNA (ssDNA). These studies indicate that both P and DnaC contain a cryptic ssDNA-binding activity that is mobilized when each forms a complex with the DnaB helicase. Concomitantly, the capacity of DnaB to bind to ssDNA, as judged by UV-crosslinking analysis, is suppressed upon formation of a P x DnaB or a DnaB x DnaC complex. This novel switch in ssDNA-binding activity evoked by complex formation suggests that interactions of P or DnaC with ssDNA may precede the transfer of DnaB onto DNA during initiation of DNA replication. Further, we find that the lambda O replication initiator enhances interaction of the P x DnaB complex with ssDNA. Partial disassembly of a ssDNA:O x P x DnaB complex by the DnaK/DnaJ/GrpE molecular chaperone system results in the transfer in cis of DnaB to the ssDNA template. On the basis of these findings, we present a general model for the transfer of DnaB onto ssDNA or onto chromosomal origins by replication initiation proteins.

Bacterial Proteins↗

Differential effects of task complexity on contextual interference in a drawing task.

A large number of studies demonstrated the beneficial effects of contextual interference (CI) created by a random practice of different task variations during training on the retention and transfer of motor skills. Current interpretations of this phenomenon assume that random practice engages the subjects in deep and elaborate processing of movement related information, whereas blocked practice results in more superficial processing leading to poorer performance on later retention and transfer tests. According to this line of interpretation, we hypothesised that the complexity of the task to be learned could modulate the effects of CI. If the task is sufficiently complex, it could force the subjects to rely on such elaborate processing, and the beneficial effects of the intertask interference created by random practice could be obscured in that case. We tested this hypothesis by analysing the effects of practice schedule (random vs. blocked), on the acquisition, retention and transfer of learning in a drawing task where subjects had to reproduce accurately, without visual control, geometrical patterns presented on a video screen, as a function of task complexity defined by the number of segments (two, three or four) of each pattern. The results indicated a clear beneficial effect of random over blocked practice on delayed retention and transfer. However, this CI effect was only observed in subjects who learned the simplest movements, and was not observed in subjects who practised the more complex task. These results are discussed in terms of intratask interference created by the planning of multiple movements and the processing of knowledge of results (KR) when the number of drawing movements is increased. These findings support the assumption that the level of cognitive effort in which the subjects are engaged during training is a main factor influencing long-term retention and transfer of motor skills.

Adolescent↗

Isometric pinch force control and learning in older adults.

The learning of a dynamic isometric pinch force task was investigated in young adults (aged 19 to 29 years) and older adults (aged 64 to 75 years) through use of a visuo-motor tracking paradigm. Both groups significantly improved performance over trials, retained what was learned 1 week later, successfully transferred to a new target, and demonstrated interlimb transfer of training effects, reflecting a strong central component to this task that is apparently intact in older adults. However, performance differences between the two groups remained throughout the trials. Although it appeared that older adults were able to utilize a model-based strategy to predict the target path, as evidenced by minimal response lag, their absolute performance was inferior to that of young adults relative to an overall root mean square error score, a correlation coefficient, and their increased use of high-frequency components in the tracking signal. The age-related performance differences may be attributable to a peripheral decrement in tactile sensibility and/or muscle reorganization as well as a slowness in processing afferent information.

Adult↗