Recursive hierarchical embedding allows humans to generate multiple hierarchical levels using simple rules. We can acquire recursion from exposure to linguistic and visual examples, but only develop the ability to understand "multiple-level" structures like "[[second] red] ball]" after mastering "same-level"…

We evaluated the effects of a discrimination training procedure for establishing praise as a reinforcer for three children with autism spectrum disorder. After establishing two praise words as discriminative stimuli and two nonsense words as S-deltas, we evaluated whether the stimuli then functioned as reinforcers by presenting each stimulus as a…

The aim of this study was to model a situation that induced choice between following two incompatible rules, each associated with a different rate of reinforcement. In Experiment 1, eight undergraduate students were exposed to a two-component multiple schedule (training). In each component, there was a concurrent variable interval (VI)-extinction…

Purpose: Previous studies have reported the success of distributional learning for adult speakers across segmental and suprasegmental categories immediately after training. On the other hand, second language (L2) perception models posit that the ease with which learners perceive a nonnative speech contrast depends on the perceptual mapping between…

Recent work has investigated the origin of infant colour categories, showing pre-linguistic infants categorise colour even in the absence of colour words. These infant categories are similar but not identical to adult categories, giving rise to an important question about how infant colour perception changes with the learning of colour words. Here…

The quest for determining the degree of learning difficulty associated with different types of categories has been instrumental in our understanding of human categorization behavior and, more broadly, human generalization. For instance, we now know that the topological nature of the dimensions (e.g., whether these are integral or separable) that…

Sequence learning is fundamental to a wide range of cognitive functions. Explaining how sequences--and the relations between the elements they comprise--are learned is a fundamental challenge to cognitive science. However, although hundreds of articles addressing this question are published each year, the actual learning mechanisms involved in the…

In a novel version of the classic dot-pattern prototype-distortion paradigm of category learning, Homa et al. (2019) tested a condition in which individual training instances never repeated, and observed results that they claimed severely challenged exemplar models of classification and recognition. Among the results was a dissociation in which…