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PubMed1991

Chunking during serial learning by a pigeon: II. Integrity of a chunk on a new list.

Can a group of items that a pigeon chunks on one list function as such on a second list? In Experiment 1, the ordinal position of the chunk was held constant across both lists. Following training on a list of colors and achromatic geometric forms (A----B----C----D'----E'), the integrity of the color chunk [A----B----C] was maintained on a list of five colors (A----B----C----F----G) even though the basis for establishing that chunk was eliminated. The integrity of the chunk [A----B----C] was also maintained on a new list of colors and forms (A----B----C----D*----E*). In Experiment 2, the ordinal position of a chunk established on list1 (A----B----C'----D') was changed on list 2. As shown by positive transfer between lists 1 and 2, the integrity of the chunks [A----B] and [C'----D'] was maintained on lists X'----A----B----Y' and X'----C'----D'----Y', respectively. Conversely, the heterogeneous list X'----B----C'----Y' took longer to learn than the original list.

Animals↗
PubMed1984

Pigeon memory: same/different concept learning, serial probe recognition acquisition, and probe delay effects on the serial-position function.

Two pigeons were trained with sets of 70 pairs of color-slide stimuli in a same/different task to perform at least 88% correct; six different sets were used in successive acquisitions. The subjects transferred same/different performance to novel stimuli with 60% accuracy following their six acquisitions; further training and daily changes in the training stimuli revealed 71% transfer to novel stimuli. Four pigeons were trained (88% criterion) in a serial-probe-recognition task with three list items, and the list length was increased with successive acquisitions to four, five, and six list items. Their serial-position functions changed for different delays between the last list item and the test item revealing a recency effect (last items remembered well) for 0-s delay, recency and primacy effects (first items remembered well) for 1- and 2-s delays, and only a primacy effect for a 10-s delay. These results are discussed in relation to human memory performance and theories of memory processing generally.

Animals↗
PubMed1992

Adult age differences in the rate of learning serial patterns: evidence from direct and indirect tests.

Subjects performed a serial reaction time task (adopted from Nissen & Bullemer, 1987) that contained a repeating pattern of spatial locations. In Experiment 1, following 20 repetitions of a 10- or 16-element pattern, reaction time was equally disrupted for both younger and older people when the sequence became random. In Experiment 2, the response times for subjects encountering the 10-element pattern were compared with those of subjects encountering a random sequence. These response time functions diverged at the same point in training for the 2 age groups. Thus, on this indirect measure of response time facilitation, both experiments revealed age similarity in the rate of pattern learning. In contrast, on a subsequent direct test of pattern learning that required prediction, the younger people earned a higher percentage correct score than the older in both experiments. Age-related dissociations between direct and indirect measures of learning and comparisons with memory-impaired populations are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

The simultaneous chain: a new approach to serial learning.

Recent advances have allowed the application of behaviorism's rigor to the control of complex cognitive tasks in animals. This article examines recent research on serially organized behavior in animals. 'Chaining theory', the traditional approach to the study of such behavior, reduces intelligent action to sequences of discrete stimulus-response units in which each overt response is evoked by a particular stimulus. However, such theories are too weak to explain many forms of serially organized cognition, both in humans and animals. By training non-human primates to produce arbitrary sequences that cannot be learned as chains of particular motor responses, the simultaneous chaining paradigm has overcome limitations of chaining theory in experiments on serial expertise, the use of numerical rules, knowledge of ordinal position, and distance and magnitude effects.

Animals↗
PubMed1998

A shared system for learning serial and temporal structure of sensori-motor sequences? Evidence from simulation and human experiments.

This research investigates the influences of temporal structure on the representation of serial order. Experiments are performed in a neural network model of sequence learning and in human subjects. In the sequence learning model, a recurrent network of leaky integrator neurons encodes a succession of internal states that become associated, by reinforcement learning, with the correct sequential responses. First, the model is shown to learn a simple temporal discrimination task. The model is then exposed to two novel serial reaction time (SRT) experiments. In the standard SRT task (M.J. Nissen, P. Bullemer, Attentional requirements of learning: evidence from performance measures, Cogn. Psychol. 19 (1987) 1-32 [16]), reaction times for stimuli presented in a repeating sequence are reduced with respect to those for random stimuli, providing a measure of sequence learning. The novelty of the current experiments is that imbedded in the serial order of the sequences, there is a temporal structure of delays. The model is sensitive to both the serial structure and the temporal structure of the sequences. This observation is then confirmed in human subjects. These results demonstrate how a novel recurrent architecture encodes the interaction of temporal and serial structure and provide insight into related aspects of human sensori-motor sequence learning.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1991

Chunking during serial learning by a pigeon: I. Basic evidence.

Chunking by pigeons was demonstrated by comparing performance on different types of lists. Experiment 1 showed that Groups II and IV (who learned lists in which colors and achromatic geometric forms were segregated: A----B----C----D'----E' and A----B----C----D----E', respectively) executed lists more rapidly than did Group I (who learned a homogeneous list of colors: A----B----C----D----E) or Groups II and III (who learned lists consisting of unsegregated colors and forms: A----B'----C----D'----E and A----B----C'----D----E, respectively). Experiment 2 showed that Groups II and IV tolerated interruptions of the list better than did Groups I, III, and V. The accuracy of responding of Groups I, III, and V decreased as a function of the duration of the interruption and the point in the sequence at which it occurred. The performance of Group II was unaffected by interruptions; Group IV was minimally affected. These results indicate that Groups II and IV organized their lists as ordered chunks.

Animals↗
PubMed1991

Serial learning by rhesus monkeys: I. Acquisition and retention of multiple four-item lists.

Two rhesus monkeys were trained to learn eight 4-item lists, each composed of 4 different photographs. Lists were trained in successive phases: A, A----B, A----B----C, and A----B----C----D. After List 4, retention, as measured by the method of savings, was, on average, 66% (range: 44-84%). Indeed, all 4 lists could be recalled reliably during a single session with neither a decrement in accuracy nor an increase in the latency of responding to each item. Response latencies on a subset test employing all possible 2- and 3-item subsets of each 4-item list support the hypothesis that monkeys form linear representations of a list. Latencies to Item 1 of a subset varied directly with the position of that item in the original list. On List 1, latencies to Item 2 varied directly with the number of intervening items between Item 1 and Item 2 in the original list. During the acquisition of Lists 5-8, both Ss mastered the A----B and A----B----C phases of training in the minimum number of trials possible.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

[Examination of rats' serial learning process with a wild card test in a modified Hill maze].

The present study examined rats' learning process of three-item series task in a modified Hill maze, using a subset test and a wild card test. In the first phase, four rats were trained with three item series composed of three simultaneously presented barriers (items A, B, C). They learned to get over the barriers in a prescribed order (A-B-C) reliably. In the next phase, three subsets of items (AB, BC, AC) were presented as prove trials. All rats responded to the subsets in a serial order consistent with the original series. In the final phase, rats were trained to produce "wild card" series (W-B-C, A-W-C, A-B-W) in addition to the original series. With training, rats mastered to substitute the wild card item (W) for the omitted original items. These results suggested that rats learned the series without using item association learning or response chaining.

Animals↗
PubMed1986

Retention interval and intertrial interval in a serial learning or delayed discrimination task.

In each of four experiments, rats were provided with the same three-event decreasing series (18-1-0) of 0.045-g food pellets in a runway. Tracking, running fast to 18 pellets and running slow to 1 and 0 pellets, was investigated as a function of the temporal interval elapsing between the events of the series (the retention interval), shifts in retention interval, and number of trials each day (or the intertrial interval), a trial being defined as presentation of each of the three events of the series. Neither retention interval, which varied from 15 s to 30 min in various investigations, nor shifts in retention interval affected tracking when only one trial was given each day. But when more than one daily trial was given, tracking was acquired more slowly and was disrupted by a shift in retention interval from 15 s to 5 min. Tracking was also disrupted by a shift from one to two trials each day. These results indicate that when given one 18-1-0 trial each day, the rat partitions events on a first-event/subsequent-event basis; that little forgetting occurs even at long retention intervals; that somewhat different memories signal events when one or more than one 18-1-0 trial occurs each day; and that retention interval deficits can arise owing to the same or similar memories' signaling different events. The results described limit the generality of three hypotheses suggested in two recent investigations: that as retention interval increases, rats find it increasingly difficult to remember and utilize serial position cues; that tracking in serial tasks is not influenced by number of trials each day; and that there are specific stimuli associated with each retention interval which, when changed, necessarily disrupt performance.

Animals↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Chunking by a pigeon in a serial learning task.

A basic principle of human memory is that lists that can be organized into memorable 'chunks' are easier to remember. Memory span is limited to a roughly constant number of chunks and is to a large extent independent of the amount of informaton contained in each chunk. Depending on the ingenuity of the code used to integrate discrete items into chunks, one can substantially increase the number of items that can be recalled correctly. Newly developed paradigms for studying memory in non-verbal organisms allow comparison of the abilities of human and non-human subjects to memorize lists. Here I present two types of evidence that pigeons 'chunk' 5-element lists whose components (colours and achromatic geometric forms) are clustered into distinct groups. Those lists were learned twice as rapidly as a homogeneous list of colours or heterogeneous lists in which the elements are not clustered. The pigeons were also tested for knowledge of the order of two elements drawn from the 5-element lists. They responded in the correct order only to those subsets that contained a chunk boundary. Thus chunking can be studied profitably in animal subjects; the cognitive processes that allow an organism to form chunks do no presuppose linguistic competence.

Animals↗
PubMed1995

Sensitivity to violations of "run" and "trill" structures in rat serial-pattern learning.

Rats learned serial patterns composed of either "run" chunks (e.g., 123 234 ...) or "trill" chunks (e.g., 121 232 ...). For each type of pattern, 1 group of rats encountered an element at the end of the pattern that violated the run or trill structure. In both run and trill patterns, violations were unusually difficult for rats to learn, whereas corresponding elements in "perfect" patterns that did not violate pattern structure were easy. Additionally, rats' errors on violation elements conformed to the structure of the patterns in which they were embedded. Thus, rats were sensitive to the run or trill organization of their patterns and mastered the rules governing the pattern before learning "exceptions to the rule."

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Quokkas (Setonix brachyurus) demonstrate tactile discrimination learning and serial-reversal learning.

Two male quokkas (Setonix brachyurus: a herbivorous macropod marsupial) were trained to discriminate pairs of stimuli in the laboratory. Quokkas indicated their choice by pulling on 1 of 2 simultaneously presented cords. The quokkas' discrimination abilities were tested on 6 tactile and 6 visual discrimination tasks. Correct responses were rewarded with food. For both quokkas, all tactile tasks were learned to a criterion of 75% correct in up to 4 20-trial sessions. No visual task maintained criterion performance in 4 sessions. One tactile discrimination was reversed 10 times. After the 1st reversal, the error rate declined sharply and fell to a level well below the initial discrimination.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

What is learned in sequential learning? An associative model of reward magnitude serial-pattern learning.

A computational model of sequence learning is described that is based on pairwise associations and generalization. Simulations by the model predicted that rats should learn a long monotonic pattern of food quantities better than a nonmonotonic pattern, as predicted by rule-learning theory, and that they should learn a short nonmonotonic pattern with highly discriminable elements better than 1 with less discriminable elements, as predicted by interitem association theory. In 2 other studies, the model also simulated behavioral "rule generalization," "extrapolation," and associative transfer data motivated by both rule-learning and associative perspectives. Although these simulations do not rule out the possibility that rats can use rule induction to learn serial patterns, they show that a simple associative model can account for the classical behavioral studies implicating rule learning in reward magnitude serial-pattern learning.

Animals↗