In many non-human species, learning retention decreases temporarily following training. This has led to the suggestion that these lapses reflect a fundamental component of memory formation. If so, transient memory lapses should also be prevalent in humans, and should occur for all types of learning. In line with these predictions, we report two…

Building conceptual knowledge that generalizes to novel situations is a key function of human memory. Category-learning paradigms have long been used to understand the mechanisms of knowledge generalization. In the present study, we tested the conditions that promote formation of new concepts. Participants underwent 1 of 6 training conditions that…

Three source-memory experiments were conducted with Spanish-English bilinguals and monolingual English speakers matched on age, education, nonverbal cognitive ability and socioeconomic status. Bilingual language proficiency and dominance were assessed using standardized objective measures. In Experiment 1, source was manipulated visuo-spatially,…

Found that preschool children can form abstract concepts of left and right which are not bound to the specific training context: children were able to generalize to new figures and to new spatial locations. The nature of the preschool child's left-right judgments is discussed. (Author/RH)

Four of eight low-functioning, developmentally delayed preschool children initially failed to demonstrate expected oddity responding. In the context of a multiple baseline across-subject design, each of the previously unsuccessful children demonstrated significant increases in the percentage of correct oddity responses immediately upon…

The study examined the effectiveness of enhancing perceptual differentiation in the training of four developmentally delayed preschool children who were so low-functioning that they did not demonstrate oddity responding (ability to choose one distinct stimulus from a group of identical stimuli). Instead of the Arabic numerals used in the original…

A schema is best understood as a statistically defined concept. Schematic concept formation consists of abstracting the common elements or properties of a defined class in a schema. Thereafter, both discrimination and retention are facilitated, since only deviations from the schema need be processed for any particular class exemplar. In the…

Three experiments were conducted to determine the effectiveness of verbal and imaginal rehearsal strategies in children's discrimination learning. With verbal materials, imaging the referent of the correct item was more facilitative than vocalizing the correct item, as long as the former strategy was defined in a manner conducive to effective…

Describes a study which used a discrimination-learning procedure to compare the ability of language-disordered and normal children to modify hypotheses. In a series of two-dimensional learning set and orthogonal problems, all children reached learning set criteria quickly; on orthogonal problems, language-disordered children performed…

Two experiments examined six-month-olds' ability to form an abstract containment category. Results indicated that, after habituation to object pairs in a containment relation, infants looked reliably longer at an example of an unfamiliar versus familiar containment relation, indicating that they could form a categorical representation of…

The problem of teaching relational discriminations to people with mental retardation is examined. The limitations of several commonly used teaching procedures are discussed and alternative approaches to simple-discrimination learning are described. Results of two preliminary single-subject studies demonstrating the feasibility of these approaches…

Five investigations examined three- and four-year olds' conceptions of the relationship between pictures and their referents. Results indicated that preschool children have difficulty holding in mind the distinct properties of picture and real referent, just as they tend to confuse the literal and intended meanings of utterances. (TJQ)

Two experiments explored how infants learn to form an abstract categorical representation of support (i.e., on) when habituated to few (i.e., 2) or many (i.e., 6) examples of the relation. When habituated to 2 pairs of objects in a support relation, 14-month-olds, but not 10-month-olds, formed the abstract spatial category (i.e., generalized the…

A total of 630 boys and girls from kindergarten to second grade were asked to compare durations that differ in beginning times with those that differ in ending times. Possible sources of children's failure to integrate beginning and end points when comparing durations were discussed. (Author/CI)

When asked to identify "chairs" from a series of pictures and order them as best examples, adults used contextual clues about the objects' function in their judgments. However, contextual function clues caused children's judgment to change greatly. Results are discussed in relation to theories of concept formation in children. (MSE)