Five experiments examined how practice early in skill acquisition affected variability and accuracy during skill retention (Experiments 1-5) and skill transfer (Experiments 3, 4, 5). Lag constraints required that each path from apex to base of a computer-generated pyramid display differ from some number (the lag) of immediately prior paths.…

Knowledge of sequential relationships enables future events to be anticipated and processed efficiently. Research with the serial reaction time task (SRTT) has shown that sequence learning often occurs implicitly without effort or awareness. Here, the authors report 4 experiments that use a triplet-learning task (TLT) to investigate sequence…

Academic anxiety interferes with achievement and performance, as well as social and psychological development among children and adults. Although the writings of Michel Foucault do not address anxiety directly, his themes of knowledge and power have been applied to education and describe relationships that are likely to create anxiety among some…

Four experiments were conducted to investigate the relationship between the binding of visual features (as measured by their after-effects on subsequent binding) and the learning of feature-conjunction probabilities. Both binding and learning effects were obtained, but they did not interact. Interestingly, (shape-color) binding effects…

One conditioned taste aversion experiment with rats assessed the impact of extinguishing a target conditioned stimulus (CS), S, in compound with a second CS, A, upon conditioned responding elicited by CS S when presented alone at test. Following initial conditioning treatment with CSs A and S, the experiment manipulated number of extinction trials…

Four experiments required participants to keep track of the locations of (i.e., update) 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, or 15 target objects after rotating. Across all conditions, updating was unaffected by set size. Although some traditional set size effects (i.e., a linear increase of latency with memory load) were observed under some conditions, these…

For years, mainstream thinking about math anxiety assumed that people fear math because they are bad at it. However, a growing body of research shows a much more complicated relationship between math ability and anxiety. It is true that people who fear math have a tendency to avoid math-related classes, which decreases their math competence.…

We examined the relationship between stress hormone (cortisol) release and acquisition and consolidation of conditioned fear learning in healthy adults. Participants underwent acquisition of differential fear conditioning, and consolidation was assessed in a 24-h delayed extinction test. The acquisition phase was immediately followed by an 11-min…

An attempt to formulate some of the practical advice which can be derived from work on the psychology of learning." Appended are 55 references. (Author/AA)

The experiments examined qualitative and quantitative changes in the dynamics of learning a novel motor skill (roller ball task) as a function of the manipulation of a control parameter (initial ball speed). The focus was on the relation between the rates of change in performance over practice time and the changing time scales of the evolving…

Historically, sensory systems have been largely ignored as potential loci of information storage in the neurobiology of learning and memory. They continued to be relegated to the role of "sensory analyzers" despite consistent findings of associatively induced enhancement of responses in primary sensory cortices to behaviorally important signal…

In a paired-associate paradigm, stimulus-response pairs were generated from a rule matrix. (Editor)

The present investigation compared three models of learning and generalization of related abstract categories: the prototype, the common feature, and the distinctive feature model. (Editor)

This booklet, the product of a second seminar on the chemical transfer of memory, summarizes the current research work presented at the seminar including future implications for education as perceived by the 12 biochemists and psychologists who participated. Developments described include 1) the memory-transfer experiments of James McConnell from…