In this study we examined conceptual priming using environmental sounds and visually displayed words. Priming for sounds and words was observed in response latency as well as in event-related potentials. Reactions were faster when a related word followed an environmental sound and vice versa. Moreover both stimulus types produced an N400-effect…

Feeding behavior of Aplysia provides an excellent model system for analyzing and comparing mechanisms underlying appetitive classical conditioning and reward operant conditioning. Behavioral protocols have been developed for both forms of associative learning, both of which increase the occurrence of biting following training. Because the neural…

This paper outlines one approach for adapting the widely used word association technique for use as an evaluation measure. In this approach, project participants are presented with a number of stimulus words reflecting project objectives and are asked to give free associations to these terms. Responses are scored either by the nature of semantic…

The purpose of this experiment was to compare components of the human and rat auditory event-related potential (ERP) in a serial feature-positive discrimination task. Subjects learned to respond to an auditory target stimulus when it followed a visual feature (X [right arrow] A+), but to not respond when it was presented alone (A-). Upon solving…

We examine the influence of inferring interlocutors' referential intentions from their body movements at the early stage of lexical acquisition. By testing human participants and comparing their performances in different learning conditions, we find that those embodied intentions facilitate both word discovery and word-meaning association. In…

Reports on a study that suggests that eight- through ten-year-old disabled readers may differ from normal readers, both in their ability to recall sequences of letters and in their ability to shorten the recall task by perceiving recognizable spelling patterns as meaningful groups. (GW)

Data on the semantic proximity of classical mechanics concepts, obtained by means of a cross-sectional investigation (100 subjects) using a continued word association test, were analyzed by individual difference multidimensional scaling to permit the mapping of semantic space for individual subjects. (JC)

Results illustrate that instructions to use imagery facilitate the intentional and the incidental learning of both normal and educable retarded children. (Authors)

Classical fear conditioning requires the recognition of conditioned stimuli (CS) and the association of the CS with an aversive stimulus. We used Affymetrix oligonucleotide microarrays to characterize changes in gene expression compared to naive mice in both the amygdala and the hippocampus 30 min after classical fear conditioning and 30 min after…

The hypothesis that disparities in children's associative responses are due to differences in verbal achievement was tested. Also tested was the assumption that for black inner-city children, conventionality in associative responding is accomplished at the expense of increasing verbal repertories and elaborating the meaning of words of varying…

Investigates the difference between two groups of adolescents learning basic science from the same curriculum (Scottish Integrated Science) but in two different languages and cultural settings. Word association tests distinguished between the groups, with the Malay children producing more associations than the Scottish children. (Author/JJD)

The impact of premature birth on associative learning was evaluated using simple delay eyeblink conditioning in which a tone conditional stimulus was paired with an air puff unconditional stimulus. Fourteen preterm (28-31 weeks gestation) and 11 full-term infants completed at least 3 conditioning sessions, 1 week apart, at 5 months of age…

Children's communication performance improves with age, which could result from increases in children's vocabularies, changes in their strategies of selecting messages from their vocabularies, or both. Three experiments were conducted to evaluate these explanations. Two types of communication tasks were employed. These data suggest younger…