This study investigated whether infants encode better the features of a briefly occluded object if its movements are specified simultaneously by vision and audition than if they are not (data collected: 2017-2019). Experiment 1 showed that 10-month-old infants (N = 39, 22 females, White-English) notice changes in the visual pattern on the object…

We trained two bonobos to discriminate among occluded, complete, and incomplete stimuli. The occluded stimulus comprised a pair of colored shapes, one of which appeared to occlude the other. The complete and incomplete stimuli involved the single shape that appeared to have been partially covered in the occluded stimulus; the complete stimulus…

Previous research has suggested that the availability of high-preference stimuli may override the reinforcing efficacy of concurrently available low-preference stimuli under relatively low schedule requirements (e.g., fixed-ratio 1 schedule). It is unknown if similar effects would be obtained under higher schedule requirements. Thus, the current…

To establish a series of derived relations between arbitrary stimuli, 20 subjects were exposed to nonarbitrary and arbitrary relational training and testing procedures. Subjects were then exposed to an avoidance conditioning procedure in which one member from each relation was established as a discriminative stimulus for avoidance and…

The current article examines patterns of adult responding to different types of more-than and less-than relations, as well as procedures for facilitating responding in accordance with these relations. Using parameters suggested in the three-term series literature, the more-than and less-than relations were separated into six distinct trial types.…

Five individuals, who were treated for severe self-injurious behaviors (SIB) with contingent electric shock, participated. Hereby, each occurrence of the target response was followed by a remotely administered aversive consequence. Participants' heart rates were compared at times when the active device of the equipment for the above procedure was…

This research examined the role the two constituents of joint control, the tact and the echoic, play in producing accurate selections of novel stimuli in response to their spoken descriptions. Experiment 1 examined the role of tacts. In response to unfamiliar spoken descriptions, children learned to select from among six successively presented…

Investigated simultaneous occurrence of emergent stimulus-response relations (functional equivalence) and stimulus-stimulus relations (stimulus equivalence). Trained 4- and 5-year olds to emit specified responses to pairs of stimuli in one setting (original training) and to emit other responses to one member of each pair in another setting…

Whisker deflection is an effective conditioned stimulus (CS) for trace eyeblink conditioning that has been shown to induce a learning-specific expansion of whisker-related cortical barrels, suggesting that memory storage for an aspect of the trace association resides in barrel cortex. To examine the role of the barrel cortex in acquisition and…

Pigeons were trained to respond to stimuli from a continuous stimulus dimension (tonal frequency) with response values from continuous response dimension. Both the number of points of correspondence and problem difficulty were varied. Following training, subjects were tested with stimulus values intermediate to those trained. During these test…

Describes the rationale underlying as well as the major features of a computer-interactive APL program IRIS, the objective of which is to obtain an individual's simple ordering of a set of stimuli in as few paired comparison preference judgments as possible. (Author/RC)

Children and adults were trained and tested on formation of novel simple discriminations and conditional stimulus relations. Subjects who formed these sets were trained and tested on formation of stimulus equivalence classes. A modest majority of children matched directly paired stimuli; a few matched indirectly paired stimuli. All normal adults…

This article reports the results of an experiment addressing extrapolation in function learning, in particular the issue of whether participants can extrapolate in a nonmonotonic manner. Existing models of function learning, including the extrapolation association model of function learning (EXAM; E. L. DeLosh, J. R. Busemeyer, & M. A. McDaniel,…

In tactile learning, sucrose is the unconditioned stimulus and reward, which is usually applied to the antenna to elicit proboscis extension and which the bee can drink when it is subsequently applied to the extended proboscis. The conditioned stimulus is a tactile object that the bee can scan with its antennae. In this paper we describe the…