Recent evidence suggests the existence of multiple cognitive mechanisms that support the general cognitive ability factor (g). Working memory and processing speed are the two best established candidate mechanisms. Relatively little attention has been given to the possibility that associative learning is an additional mechanism contributing to g.…

Associative learning is critical to normal cognitive development in children. However, young adults typically outperform children on paired-associate tasks involving visual, verbal and spatial location stimuli. The present experiment investigated cross-modal odour-place associative memory in children (7-10 years) and young adults (18-24 years).…

The effects of associative strength and gist relations on rates of children's and adults' true and false memories were examined in three experiments. Children aged 5-11 and university-aged adults participated in a standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott false memory task using DRM and category lists in two experiments and in the third, children…

Participants in 2 experiments performed 2 simultaneous tasks: one, a dual-target detection task within a rapid sequence of target and distractor letters; the other, a cued reaction time task requiring participants to make a cued left-right response immediately after each letter sequence. Under these rapid visual presentation conditions, it is…

We demonstrate here that initially neutral items can acquire "specific" value based on their associated outcomes, and that responses of physiological systems to such previously meaningless stimuli can rapidly reflect this associative history. Each participant participated in an associative learning task in which four neutral abstract pictures were…

Subjects were exposed to a word-picture association training phase in which each of 2 arbitrary nonsense syllables printed in blue and red font, respectively, were paired with either sexual or aversive photographic images. Subjects were then exposed to an equivalence training procedure that led to the formation of 2 3-member equivalence relations,…

In experiments that measured food consumption, Holland (1981; "Learning and Motivation," 12, 1-18) found that food aversions were formed when an exteroceptive associate of food was paired with illness, but not when such an associate was paired with shock. By contrast, measuring the ability of food to reinforce instrumental responding,…

Using a conditioned taste aversion procedure with rats as the subjects, two experiments examined the effect of presenting a conditioned stimulus (CS saccharin solution) in one context followed by an unconditioned stimulus (US LiCl) in a different context. Experiment 1 showed that animals which received the above-mentioned procedure (Group D)…

Young children often exhibit flexible behaviors relying on different kinds of information in different situations. This flexibility has been traditionally attributed to conceptual knowledge. Reported research demonstrates that flexibility can be acquired implicitly and it does not require conceptual knowledge. In Experiment 1, 4- to 5-year-olds…

How do children learn associations between novel words and complex perceptual displays? Using a visual preference procedure, the authors tested 12- and 19-month-olds to see whether the infants would associate a novel word with a complex 2-part object or with either of that object's parts, both of which were potentially objects in their own right…

This study investigates associative learning explanations of the limited attainment of adult compared to child language acquisition in terms of learned attention to cues. It replicates and extends Ellis and Sagarra (2010) in demonstrating short- and long-term learned attention in the acquisition of temporal reference in Latin. In Experiment 1,…

Despite the central status of avoidance in explaining the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders, surprisingly little behavioral research has been conducted on human avoidance. In the present paper, first we provide a brief review of the empirical literature on avoidance. Next, we describe the implications of research on derived relational…

This article examines how probability (lexical frequency and previous mention), speech style, and prosody affect word duration, and how these factors interact. Participants read controlled materials in clear and plain speech styles. As expected, more probable words (higher frequencies and second mentions) were significantly shorter than less…

Associations between corresponding stimulus-response locations are often characterized as over learned, producing automatic activation. However, 84 practice trials with an incompatible mapping eliminate the benefit for spatial correspondence in a transfer Simon task, where stimulus location is irrelevant. The authors examined whether transfer…

How does the brain learn to recognize an object from multiple viewpoints while scanning a scene with eye movements? How does the brain avoid the problem of erroneously classifying parts of different objects together? How are attention and eye movements intelligently coordinated to facilitate object learning? A neural model provides a unified…