Cue Competition in the Absence of Compound Training

Author(s):  
Matute Helena ◽  
Pineño Oskar
1999 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 1011-1024
Author(s):  
Amy M. Richards ◽  
E. Evan Krauter

Prospective memory refers to remembering to perform a previously planned activity. Two experiments were conducted to see if effects of cue competition similar to blocking and overshadowing occur in prospective memory. Participants were led to believe that the experiments were about the relationship between memory and creativity. To test prospective memory, participants were instructed to mark cue words that would appear later in a task requiring the generation of sentences. In Exp. 1 ( N = 119) one group was told to place an “x” over the cue word “rake”; a second was told to mark two words of equal salience (“method” and “rake”); and a third group was told to mark two cue words of unequal salience (the highly salient word “monad” and “rake”). “Rake” was the only cue word that actually appeared in the task involving generation of sentences. Participants instructed to place an “x” over one cue marked the target cue “rake” more frequently than if told to mark two cues (an overshadowing-like effect). The frequency of marking “rake” was lowest on the first test trial if participants had been instructed to mark both “rake” and “monad.” In Exp. 2 (N = 43) a blocking group was trained to mark one cue word (“rake”) and a control group received no training. Two days later, all participants were instructed to mark two cues (“rake” and “method”) during a task involving the generation of sentences. Prior training interfered with performance to a new cue (“method”) given in combination with the pretrained cue (“rake,” a blocking-like effect). These experiments demonstrate the existence of cue competition in prospective memory and suggest the possibility of applying theories of elementary associative learning to the study of prospective memory.


2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola C Byrom ◽  
Robin A Murphy

When multiple cues are presented in compound and trained to predict an outcome, the cues may compete for association with an outcome. However, if both cues are necessary for solution of the discrimination, then competition might be expected to interfere with the solution of the discrimination. We consider how unequal stimulus salience influences learning in configural discriminations, where no individual stimulus predicts the outcome. We compared two hypotheses: (1) salience modulation minimises the initial imbalance in salience and (2) unequal stimulus salience will impair acquisition of configural discriminations. We assessed the effect of varying stimulus salience in a biconditional discrimination (AX+, AY−, BX−, BY+). Across two experiments, we found stronger discrimination when stimuli had matched, rather than mismatched, salience, supporting our second hypothesis. We discuss the implications of this finding for Mackintosh’s model of selective attention, modified elemental models and configural models of learning.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaoming Wang ◽  
Bob Rehder

AbstractChoice alternatives often consist of multiple attributes that vary in how successfully they predict reward. Some standard theoretical models assert that decision makers evaluate choices either by weighting those attribute optimally in light of previous experience (so-called rational models), or adopting heuristics that use attributes suboptimally but in a manner that yields reasonable performance at minimal cost (e.g., the take-the-best heuristic). However, these models ignore both the possibility that decision makers might learn to associate reward with whole stimuli (a particular combination of attributes) rather than individual attributes and the common finding that decisions can be overly influenced by recent experiences and exhibit cue competition effects. Participants completed a two-alternative choice task where each stimulus consisted of three binary attributes that were predictive of reward, albeit with different degrees of reliability. Their choices revealed that, rather than using only the “best” attribute, they made use of all attributes but in manner that reflected the classic cue competition effect known as overshadowing. The time needed to make decisions increased as the number of relevant attributes increased, suggesting that reward was associated with attributes rather than whole stimuli. Fitting a family of computational models formed by crossing attribute use (optimal vs. only the best), representation (attribute vs. whole stimuli), and recency (biased or not), revealed that models that performed better when they made use of all information, represented attributes, and incorporated recency effects and cue competition. We also discuss the need to incorporate selective attention and hypothesis-testing like processes to account for results with multiple-attribute stimuli.


2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro L. Cobos ◽  
Antonio Caño ◽  
Francisco J. López ◽  
Juan L. Luque ◽  
Julián Almaraz
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine K. Greenaway ◽  
Evan J. Livesey

Causal and predictive learning research often employs intuitive and familiar hypothetical scenarios to facilitate learning novel relationships. The allergist task, in which participants are asked to diagnose the allergies of a fictitious patient, is one example of this. In such studies, it is common practice to ask participants to ignore their existing knowledge of the scenario and make judgments based only on the relationships presented within the experiment. Causal judgments appear to be sensitive to instructions that modify assumptions about the scenario. However, the extent to which prior knowledge continues to affect competition for associative learning, even after participants are instructed to disregard it, is unknown. To answer this, we created a cue competition design that capitalized on prevailing beliefs about the allergenic properties of various foods. High and low allergenic foods were paired with foods moderately associated with allergy to create two compounds; high + moderate and low + moderate. We expected high allergenic foods to produce greater competition for associative memory than low allergenic foods. High allergenic foods may affect learning either because they generate a strong memory of allergy or because they are more salient in the context of the task. We therefore also manipulated the consistency of the high allergenic cue-outcome relationship with prior beliefs about the nature of the allergies. A high allergenic food that is paired with an inconsistent allergenic outcome should generate more prediction error and thus more competition for learning, than one that is consistent with prior beliefs. Participants were instructed to either use or ignore their knowledge of food allergies to complete the task. We found that while participants were able to set aside their prior knowledge when making causal judgments about the foods in question, associative memory was weaker for the cues paired with highly allergenic foods than cues paired with low allergenic foods regardless of instructions. The consistency manipulation had little effect on this result, suggesting that the effects in associative memory are most likely driven by selective attention to highly allergenic cues. This has implications for theories of causal learning as well as the way causal learning tasks are designed.


Sports ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athos Trecroci ◽  
Marco Duca ◽  
Damiano Formenti ◽  
Giampietro Alberti ◽  
F. Marcello Iaia ◽  
...  

This study aimed to investigate the effects of a five-week compound training (with strength and plyometric exercises performed on separate days) on sprint, change of direction, and vertical jump in young soccer players. Eighteen novices in strength and plyometric training were assigned to either a compound training (CMPT) or a control condition (CNT). Both groups trained three times per week. One session was dedicated to soccer-specific drills. The other two weekly sessions were dedicated to circuit-based training routines employing on one-day strength exercises and on the other day plyometric exercises in the CMPT group. At the same time, the CNT group performed two weekly soccer-specific training sessions. All players were tested by 15-m sprint, change-of-direction and acceleration test (CODAT), squat jump, and countermovement jump with arms swing tests. CMPT group improved CODAT, squat jump and countermovement jump to a higher extent compared to CNT group (large vs small or trivial effects, p < 0.05), while both groups had similar 15-m sprint performance (p > 0.05). These results support the use of compound training to improve change of direction and vertical jump performances in young novice soccer players, which are unfamiliar with structured and advanced strength and plyometric training.


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