“Shaping” of Frequency Discrimination Performance Using Only Intrinsic Reinforcement

1975 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 451-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Auerbach

This experiment compared two modes of practice at a difficult frequency discrimination, i.e., one in which the frequency difference was initially correctly discriminated only 65% of the trials in a two-alternative forced-choice task. One group of Ss ( N = 13) was assigned to a progressive-practice group, in which the frequency difference to be discriminated was progressively changed from a large, easy, difference to the difficult, small, difference. The other group of Ss ( N = 13) received the same amount of practice as the first, but all at the difficult discrimination. Only the progressive-practice group improved their discrimination performance. Since no feedback was given, the effect of progressive practice is interpreted as “shaping” Ss' attentional response by virtue of the information provided by the successively more difficult discriminations. This “shaping” process is potentially available as a learning mechanism for other fine discriminations.

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 1054-1072 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica F. SCHWAB ◽  
Casey LEW-WILLIAMS ◽  
Adele E. GOLDBERG

AbstractChildren tend to regularize their productions when exposed to artificial languages, an advantageous response to unpredictable variation. But generalizations in natural languages are typically conditioned by factors that children ultimately learn. In two experiments, adult and six-year-old learners witnessed two novel classifiers, probabilistically conditioned by semantics. Whereas adults displayed high accuracy in their productions – applying the semantic criteria to familiar and novel items – children were oblivious to the semantic conditioning. Instead, children regularized their productions, over-relying on only one classifier. However, in a two-alternative forced-choice task, children's performance revealed greater respect for the system's complexity: they selected both classifiers equally, without bias toward one or the other, and displayed better accuracy on familiar items. Given that natural languages are conditioned by multiple factors that children successfully learn, we suggest that their tendency to simplify in production stems from retrieval difficulty when a complex system has not yet been fully learned.


1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 436-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Madden ◽  
Lawrence L. Feth

This study compares the temporal resolution of frequency-modulated sinusoids by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired subjects in a discrimination task. One signal increased linearly by 200 Hz in 50 msec. The other was identical except that its trajectory followed a series of discrete steps. Center frequencies were 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz. As the number of steps was increased, the duration of the individual steps decreased, and the subjects’ discrimination performance monotonically decreased to chance. It was hypothesized that the listeners could not temporally resolve the trajectory of the step signals at short step durations. At equal sensation levels, and at equal sound pressure levels, temporal resolution was significantly reduced for the impaired subjects. The difference between groups was smaller in the equal sound pressure level condition. Performance was much poorer at 4000 Hz than at the other test frequencies in all conditions because of poorer frequency discrimination at that frequency.


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 1243-1257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy Pik Ki Mok ◽  
Holly Sze Ho Fung ◽  
Vivian Guo Li

Purpose Previous studies showed early production precedes late perception in Cantonese tone acquisition, contrary to the general principle that perception precedes production in child language. How tone production and perception are linked in 1st language acquisition remains largely unknown. Our study revisited the acquisition of tone in Cantonese-speaking children, exploring the possible link between production and perception in 1st language acquisition. Method One hundred eleven Cantonese-speaking children aged between 2;0 and 6;0 (years;months) and 10 adolescent reference speakers participated in tone production and perception experiments. Production materials with 30 monosyllabic words were transcribed in filtered and unfiltered conditions by 2 native judges. Perception accuracy was based on a 2-alternative forced-choice task with pictures covering all possible tone pair contrasts. Results Children's accuracy of production and perception of all the 6 Cantonese tones was still not adultlike by age 6;0. Both production and perception accuracies matured with age. A weak positive link was found between the 2 accuracies. Mother's native language contributed to children's production accuracy. Conclusions Our findings show that production and perception abilities are associated in tone acquisition. Further study is needed to explore factors affecting production accuracy in children. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7960826


2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Dressel ◽  
Teena D. Moody ◽  
Barbara J. Knowlton

Symmetry ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex L. Jones ◽  
Bastian Jaeger

The factors influencing human female facial attractiveness—symmetry, averageness, and sexual dimorphism—have been extensively studied. However, recent studies, using improved methodologies, have called into question their evolutionary utility and links with life history. The current studies use a range of approaches to quantify how important these factors actually are in perceiving attractiveness, through the use of novel statistical analyses and by addressing methodological weaknesses in the literature. Study One examines how manipulations of symmetry, averageness, femininity, and masculinity affect attractiveness using a two-alternative forced choice task, finding that increased masculinity and also femininity decrease attractiveness, compared to unmanipulated faces. Symmetry and averageness yielded a small and large effect, respectively. Study Two utilises a naturalistic ratings paradigm, finding similar effects of averageness and masculinity as Study One but no effects of symmetry and femininity on attractiveness. Study Three applies geometric face measurements of the factors and a random forest machine learning algorithm to predict perceived attractiveness, finding that shape averageness, dimorphism, and skin texture symmetry are useful features capable of relatively accurate predictions, while shape symmetry is uninformative. However, the factors do not explain as much variance in attractiveness as the literature suggests. The implications for future research on attractiveness are discussed.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Molano-Mazon ◽  
Guangyu Robert Yang ◽  
Ainhoa Hermoso-Mendizabal ◽  
Jaime de la Rocha

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tristan Nguyen ◽  

This paper studies the so-called Take the Best (TTB) and the other two related heuristics which are Take the last (TTL) and the Minimalist heuristics to collect more evidence on these heuristics and then make comparison on performance of these heuristics’ potential users who have different degree of knowledge. People actually adhere to the recognition heuristics (RH) so often when facing inferential choice between a recognized object and a novel one. It is a main purpose of our empirical field study to look for evidence on what decision makers really do to arrive at their final choice in cases where both objects in the choice task are recognized. Will they still stick to recognition cue, or will they follow TTB or TTL or the Minimalist heuristic or will they resort to other type of strategies? Our results are somehow ambiguous. In sum, the cues the participants really picked up from their minds when taking the task and revealed by themselves in the interviews are more diverse and complicated than the anticipated ones.


1966 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Leonard ◽  
R. C. Newman ◽  
A. Carpenter

Following an earlier observation that systematic variations in performance on a task with heavy frequency imbalance was correlated with fluctuations in the amount of bias in the input programme, an experiment was carried out to establish the roles of long and short term sampling. Two groups of subjects were trained on a self-paced, five-choice task. One group's input had an average of 68 per cent. bias on one source, the other had 44 per cent. on the same source. Analysis of data was carried out on three levels of local bias for each condition, one level being identical for both conditions. It was found that responses to the biased stimuli were determined by the average bias in each input sequence and not by moment to moment variations in that bias. The effect observed originally can therefore be accounted for in terms of a relatively simple additive model which includes the “repetition effect” first described by Bertelson.


2001 ◽  
Vol 439 ◽  
pp. 403-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAMA GOVINDARAJAN ◽  
R. NARASIMHA

We first demonstrate that, if the contributions of higher-order mean flow are ignored, the parabolized stability equations (Bertolotti et al. 1992) and the ‘full’ non-parallel equation of Govindarajan & Narasimha (1995, hereafter GN95) are both equivalent to order R−1 in the local Reynolds number R to Gaster's (1974) equation for the stability of spatially developing boundary layers. It is therefore of some concern that a detailed comparison between Gaster (1974) and GN95 reveals a small difference in the computed amplitude ratios. Although this difference is not significant in practical terms in Blasius flow, it is traced here to the approximation, in Gaster's method, of neglecting the change in eigenfunction shape due to flow non-parallelism. This approximation is not justified in the critical and the wall layers, where the neglected term is respectively O(R−2/3) and O(R−1) compared to the largest term. The excellent agreement of GN95 with exact numerical simulations, on the other hand, suggests that the effect of change in eigenfunction is accurately taken into account in that paper.


2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1929) ◽  
pp. 20201148
Author(s):  
Roza G. Kamiloğlu ◽  
Katie E. Slocombe ◽  
Daniel B. M. Haun ◽  
Disa A. Sauter

Vocalizations linked to emotional states are partly conserved among phylogenetically related species. This continuity may allow humans to accurately infer affective information from vocalizations produced by chimpanzees. In two pre-registered experiments, we examine human listeners' ability to infer behavioural contexts (e.g. discovering food) and core affect dimensions (arousal and valence) from 155 vocalizations produced by 66 chimpanzees in 10 different positive and negative contexts at high, medium or low arousal levels. In experiment 1, listeners ( n = 310), categorized the vocalizations in a forced-choice task with 10 response options, and rated arousal and valence. In experiment 2, participants ( n = 3120) matched vocalizations to production contexts using yes/no response options. The results show that listeners were accurate at matching vocalizations of most contexts in addition to inferring arousal and valence. Judgments were more accurate for negative as compared to positive vocalizations. An acoustic analysis demonstrated that, listeners made use of brightness and duration cues, and relied on noisiness in making context judgements, and pitch to infer core affect dimensions. Overall, the results suggest that human listeners can infer affective information from chimpanzee vocalizations beyond core affect, indicating phylogenetic continuity in the mapping of vocalizations to behavioural contexts.


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