This study, supported by the National Science Foundation, "shows that the nursery school child remembers a set of pictures or objects better if the items are unitized, rather than arranged in a series. (Author)

Three studies examined two-year olds' understanding of novel terms for objects that they are already familiar with under another name. The studies found that the new term was most likely to be treated as a second basic-level name for the category to which the object belonged. (MDM)

A scheme is described for locally Bayesian parameter updating in models structured as successions of component functions. The essential idea is to back-propagate the target data to interior modules, such that an interior component's target is the input to the next component that maximizes the probability of the next component's target. Each layer…

Some researchers have suggested that although feedback may enhance performance during associative learning, it does so at the expense of later retention. To examine this issue, subjects (N = 258) learned Luganda-English word pairs. After 2 initial exposures to the materials, subjects were tested on each item several times, with the presence and…

Forward blocking is one of the best-documented phenomena in Pavlovian animal conditioning. According to contemporary associative learning theories, forward blocking arises directly from the hardwired basic learning rules that govern the acquisition or expression of associations. Contrary to this view, here the authors demonstrate that blocking in…

Protein synthesis-dependent long-term memory in Apis mellifera and Drosophila melanogaster is formed after multiple trainings that are spaced in time. The parasitic wasp Lariophagus distinguendus remarkably differs from these species. It significantly responds to the artificial odor furfurylheptanoate (FFH) in olfactometer experiments, when this…

N. Stewart, G. D. A. Brown, and N. Chater presented a relative judgment model (RJM) of absolute identification, in which the current stimulus is judged relative to the preceding stimulus. S. Brown, A. A. J. Marley, and Y. Lacouture found that the RJM does not predict their finding of increased accuracy after large stimulus jumps, except at the…

Some patients considered for left temporal lobectomy for epilepsy present with normal verbal learning and no MRI evidence of hippocampal pathology. In order to preserve learning function, the surgical approach in these cases often aims at sparing the hippocampus. Parahippocampal structures, including the left perirhinal region, however, also…

Recent data suggest recovery of language systems but persistent structural abnormalities in the prematurely born. We tested the hypothesis that subjects who were born prematurely develop alternative networks for processing language. Subjects who were born prematurely (n = 22; 600-1250 g birth weight), without neonatal brain injury on neonatal…

Results of a word association task administered to second and sixth grade children and adults suggest that whether the word association response is of the same or different form as the stimulus word is related to the word-count frequency of the stimulus and the participants age. (Author/KM)

An aptitude treatment interaction was predicted in which 30 retarded adolescents were expected to profit most from associative training and 30 intellectually average third graders most from conceptual training. Ss received either associative training designed to strengthen direct associations among pairs of conceptually related members of a free…