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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Facilitative effect of mnemonic strategies on multiple-associate learning in EMR children.

The efficacy of mnemonic strategy training for multiple-associate learning was examined. Following pretraining measures of multiple-associate learning and general memory skills, 33 young EMR children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: imagery, rote repetition, or control. Each group participated in a story and game program for 5 hours over a 2-week period, which, depending on condition, involved intensive training in the use of either imagery or rote repetition or no direct mnemonic training. Posttraining measures of children who received mnemonic training showed marked improvement, with imagery being superior (p less than .01) to rote repetition.

Association Learning

Differential effects of age and cerebral atrophy upon span of immediate recall and paired-associate learning in older patients suspected of dementia.

Seventy-eight patients suspected of dementia, 50 years of age or older and without evidence of focal cerebral lesion or systemic illness, were administered the Digit-Span Forward and Paired-Associate Learning subtests of the Wechsler Memory Scale. Computerized axial tomography, allowing a visualization and measurement of the lateral ventricles and cortical sulci, was employed to measure cerebral atrophy. Four groups were defined as follows: (1) age 50-69, without atrophy (N = 27), (2) age 50-69, with atrophy (N = 17), (3) age 70-89, without atrophy (N = 18), (4) age 70-89, with atrophy (N = 16). Results of analyses of variance indicate that Digit-Span is affected by cerebral atrophy but not by age, while Paired-Associate Learning is affected by both age and cerebral atrophy. No interaction effect between age and cerebral atrophy was found for either task. These results are discussed within the context of previous research, and implications for both models of memory and theories of the effects of cerebral atrophy in different ag groups are suggested.

Age Factors

Verbal vs. nonverbal and complex vs. simple responses in the paired-associate learning of poor readers.

The relative ability of 38 fourth-grade boys, good and poor readers, to learn paired-associate lists requiring either verbal or nonverbal responses was assessed with four different tasks. Two of the tasks required either simple or complex verbal responses, while the other two involved learning simple and complex oral, nonverbal responses. The stimuli for all tasks were letter-like visual figures drawn on cards. The good readers learned more efficiently overall, but the major differences between reading groups occurred on the tasks requiring verbal responses.

Child

Taste aversions to mother's milk: the age-related role of nursing in acquisition and expression of a learned association.

The development of taste aversion learning to novel cues contained in mother's milk was examined in rat pups. Pups receiving distinctive mild by experimenter-delivered oral infusions followed by toxicosis formed an aversion to the dam's diet. Robust aversions were learned as early as Day 10 and were retained for at least 11 days. When the same distinctive milk was obtained directly from a foster mother through nursing, however, only weanling-age pups (over 20 days) formed an aversion. X-ray analysis of nipple location in the mouths of suckling pups suggested that pups between the ages of 10 and 21 days receive milk at a similar tongue locus. Flavored milk was then delivered at specific time intervals in controlled quantities through tongue cannulas implanted at loci corresponding to the nipple position shown by the X-rays. Cannulated preweanling pups that were attached to a nipple during milk delivery failed to associate the taste cue with illness, whereas both preweanlings off the nipple and weanlings on the nipple acquired aversions to the taste cue in the milk. The evidence obtained in these experiments suggests that pups of all ages are incapable of expressing a taste aversion in a nursing situation and that preweanling pups in particular are also dificient in acquiring aversions within a suckling context. The inability of preweanling pups to acquire taste aversions in a nursing situation appears to result from a failure to associate taste cues with illness rather than a failure to detect taste cues obtained from a nipple.

Age Factors

Voltage-dependent calcium and potassium ion conductances: a contingency mechanism for an associative learning model.

Persistent light-induced depolarization results from Ca2+ influx across a photoreceptor membrane. The marked dependence on potential of this Ca2+ influx and a Ca+-dependent K+ efflux accounts for enhancement of the light-induced depolarization when light is paired with rotation. A positive feedback cycle between light-induced depolarization and synaptic depolarization due to stimulus pairing can explain long-lasting behavioral changes produced by associative training but not control paradigms. The sensitivity of this Ca2+ influx to intracellular levels of adenosine 3'-5'-monophosphate suggests biochemical steps for this model of associative learning.

Animals

Paired associate learning in early infantile autism and receptive developmental aphasia.

A comparative study of nonverbal MA matched groups of five autistic, five aphasic, five normal and five retarded children was made on an auditory-visual and a visual-visual paired-associate learning task. The results showed that, although the autistic and receptive aphasic children were both unable to associate sounds with their visual counterparts at the same rate as normal children, the aphasic children overcame this deficit at a significantly faster rate than autistic children. This study pinpoints one dysfunction that could subsume the severe verbal comprehension defect in autistic and aphasic children.

Adolescent

Associative learning, habit, and health behavior.

Habit is defined as a firmly established behavior pattern marked by increasing automaticity, decreasing awareness, and partial independence from reinforcement. Reinforcement is viewed as of primary importance in the acquisition of behavior, whereas principles of associative learning enter to complement reinforcement in the maintenance of behavior. Habit is seen as a mechanism for short-circuiting the reinforcement process to avoid its overload and for providing the organism with speed and stability of response instead of the variability offered by reinforcement. The implications of this definition of habit for acquisition and alteration of health behavior are discussed; examples include smoking, obesity, alcoholism, and coronary-prone (type A) behavior.

Alcoholism

Imagery in the associative learning of schizophrenics.

The present experiment is similar to Bower's (1970) study on imagery as a relational organizer in paired-associate (PA) learning with normals. Three groups of 20 schizophrenic patients learned three different lists of 30 word-word paired-associates, which used either interactive imagery, separation imagery, or rote repetition encoding. Ss were tested on stimulus recognition and paired-associate recall, given recognition. Differences in stimulus recognition and paired-associate recall were not significant across the three encoding methods. Results suggest that schizophrenics are unable to benefit from imaginal cues to facilitate learning in a manner similar to normals. These results are interpreted as providing additional support for the notion that the schizophrenics' cognitive deficit is associated with the relational organizing process of learning.

Adult

Schizophrenic psychology, associative learning and the role of forebrain dopamine.

It is suggested that schizophrenic thinking can be explained as a lowering of levels of significance for acceptance of conclusions based on inductive logic. The formal similarity between inductive logic and operant, or classical conditioning is pointed out. It is thus possible to explain the therapeutic effects of neuroleptic drugs by referring to the effect of these, and related drugs, and of lesions of ascending dopamine pathways, on acquisition of conditioned responses. It is tentatively suggested that recognition of association of related features of the environment, whether in humans or animals occurs in the basal ganglia by a dopamine dependent process. A role is suggested for neocortical noradrenaline in consolidaton of newly acquired associations. Implications and tests of this hypothesis are discussed.

Animals