Effect of Prior Runway Experience on Avoidance Learning

1963 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 575-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman D. Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Avoidance Learning ◽  
Avoidance Behavior ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Early Experience ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Critical Periods ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
Practice Trials ◽  
Better Than

Mice were given 30 practice trials or 30 arbitrary shocks in a runway at 17, 23, 40, or 55 days of age. Performance was directly related to age, with adult Ss showing the greatest improvement during the 30 trials. At 85 days of age, Ss were run to criterion in the same runway. Results indicated that (1) groups receiving prior shock or practice in the runway were significantly better than controls with no prior runway experience; (2) Ss receiving prior practice were not significantly different from Ss receiving equal amounts of shock without practice; (3) animals receiving prior experience at 23 days of age were superior to other groups on the adult avoidance learning task. Critical periods for learning and implications of a multi-factor theory to account for the effects of early experience on avoidance behavior are discussed.

Learned Helplessness in Shuttlebox-Avoidance Behavior

1982 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. M. Cotton ◽  
A. Benger ◽  
L. Fyfe ◽  
K. Moorehouse ◽  
R. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Learned Helplessness ◽  
Avoidance Behavior ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Avoidance Task ◽  
Shuttlebox Avoidance ◽  
Skinner Box ◽  
Helplessness Hypothesis ◽  
Better Than

Three groups of rats ( n = 6) were given prior experience in a Skinner box before being trained in a two-way shuttlebox-avoidance task. Subjects experiencing controllable shock (avoidable or escapable) performed significantly better than a yoked control group which had no control over shocks in the Skinner box and better than a control group which experienced no shock in the Skinner box. Results can be interpreted adequately in terms of the learned helplessness hypothesis proposed by Maier, Seligman, and Solomon.

scholarly journals Another bilingual advantage? Perception of talker-voice information

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUSANNAH V. LEVI
Keyword(s):  
Learning Task ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Bilingual Advantage ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Social Tasks ◽  
Processing Information ◽  
Voice Processing ◽  
Better Than

A bilingual advantage has been found in both cognitive and social tasks. In the current study, we examine whether there is a bilingual advantage in how children process information about who is talking (talker-voice information). Younger and older groups of monolingual and bilingual children completed the following talker-voice tasks with bilingual speakers: a discrimination task in English and German (an unfamiliar language), and a talker-voice learning task in which they learned to identify the voices of three unfamiliar speakers in English. Results revealed effects of age and bilingual status. Across the tasks, older children performed better than younger children and bilingual children performed better than monolingual children. Improved talker-voice processing by the bilingual children suggests that a bilingual advantage exists in a social aspect of speech perception, where the focus is not on processing the linguistic information in the signal, but instead on processing information about who is talking.

scholarly journals Consolidation of reward memory during sleep does not require dopaminergic activation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Alizadeh Asfestani ◽  
V Brechtmann ◽  
J Santiago ◽  
J Born ◽  
GB Feld
Keyword(s):  
Learning Task ◽  
Reward Learning ◽  
Nocturnal Sleep ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Dopaminergic Neurotransmission ◽  
Long Duration ◽  
Differential Retention ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Dopaminergic Activation

AbstractSleep enhances memories, especially, if they are related to future rewards. Although dopamine has been shown to be a key determinant during reward learning, the role of dopaminergic neurotransmission for amplifying reward-related memories during sleep remains unclear. In the present study, we scrutinize the idea that dopamine is needed for the preferential consolidation of rewarded information. We blocked dopaminergic neurotransmission, thereby aiming to wipe out preferential sleep-dependent consolidation of high over low rewarded memories during sleep. Following a double-blind, balanced, crossover design 20 young healthy men received the dopamine d2-like receptor blocker Sulpiride (800 mg) or placebo, after learning a Motivated Learning Task. The task required participants to memorize 80 highly and 80 lowly rewarded pictures. Half of them were presented for a short (750 ms) and a long duration (1500 ms), respectively, which enabled to dissociate effects of reward on sleep-associated consolidation from those of mere encoding depth. Retrieval was tested after a retention interval of 20 h that included 8 h of nocturnal sleep. As expected, at retrieval, highly rewarded memories were remembered better than lowly rewarded memories, under placebo. However, there was no evidence for an effect of blocking dopaminergic neurotransmission with Sulpiride during sleep on this differential retention of rewarded information. This result indicates that dopaminergic activation is not required for the preferential consolidation of reward-associated memory. Rather it appears that dopaminergic activation only tags such memories at encoding for intensified reprocessing during sleep.

EXPRESS: Practice and Transfer with Mappings of Spoon Tip and Handle to Keypress Responses

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110413
Author(s):  
Yaqi Xu ◽  
Aiping Xiong ◽  
Robert Proctor
Keyword(s):  
Prior Experience ◽  
Test Session ◽  
Verbal Reports ◽  
Practice Session ◽  
Compatible Mapping ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Practice Trials

When orientation of a horizontal spoon image varies to the left or right, instructions can map left and right keypresses to the tip or handle location. We conducted Experiment 1 to determine whether practice with an incompatible mapping of the salient tip transfers to a test session in which the relevant part and/or mapping are changed. Participants performed 80 practice trials with tip-incompatible mapping, followed by 80 test trials with tip-compatible, tip-incompatible, handle-compatible, or handle-incompatible mapping. Performance improved across 20-trial blocks in the practice session. In the test session, responses were 65-ms faster with tip-compatible than tip-incompatible mapping but 31-ms faster with handle-incompatible than handle-compatible mapping. This latter result, and verbal reports, indicate that some participants adopted a strategy of responding compatibly to the salient tip even though instructed to respond to the handle. Experiment 2 focused on whether participants with handle-incompatible mapping instructions would adopt the tip-compatible strategy spontaneously or after receiving a hint. 77% of participants reported adopting the tip-compatible strategy in session 1, showing that prior experience responding to the tip is not necessary. 9% of participants did not report using that strategy in session 1 but reported changing to it in session 2 after receiving the hint. Their responses in session 2 were slower than those who used the strategy throughout, but this difference was minimal in the last two trial blocks. Compatible mapping of the salient spoon tip to keypresses dominated performance over prior practice with incompatible tip mapping and instructions with incompatible handle mapping.

scholarly journals Consolidation of Reward Memory during Sleep Does Not Require Dopaminergic Activation

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (9) ◽  
pp. 1688-1703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjan Alizadeh Asfestani ◽  
Valentin Brechtmann ◽  
João Santiago ◽  
Andreas Peter ◽  
Jan Born ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Learning Task ◽  
Reward Learning ◽  
Nocturnal Sleep ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Dopaminergic Neurotransmission ◽  
Msec Duration ◽  
Differential Retention ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Dopaminergic Activation

Sleep enhances memories, especially if they are related to future rewards. Although dopamine has been shown to be a key determinant during reward learning, the role of dopaminergic neurotransmission for amplifying reward-related memories during sleep remains unclear. In this study, we scrutinize the idea that dopamine is needed for the preferential consolidation of rewarded information. We impaired dopaminergic neurotransmission, thereby aiming to wipe out preferential sleep-dependent consolidation of high- over low-rewarded memories during sleep. Following a double-blind, balanced, crossover design, 17 young healthy men received the dopamine d2-like receptor blocker sulpiride (800 mg) or placebo, after learning a motivated learning task. The task required participants to memorize 80 highly and 80 lowly rewarded pictures. Half of them were presented for a short (750 msec) and a long (1500 msec) duration, respectively, which permitted dissociation of the effects of reward on sleep-associated consolidation from those of mere encoding depth. Retrieval was tested after a retention interval of approximately 22 hr that included 8 hr of nocturnal sleep. As expected, at retrieval, highly rewarded memories were remembered better than lowly rewarded memories, under placebo. However, there was no evidence for an effect of reducing dopaminergic neurotransmission with sulpiride during sleep on this differential retention of rewarded information. This result indicates that dopaminergic activation likely is not required for the preferential consolidation of reward-associated memory. Rather, it appears that dopaminergic activation only tags such memories at encoding for intensified reprocessing during sleep.

Handwritten and Word-Processed Story Retellings by School-Aged Students Who are Deaf

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melody L. Stoner ◽  
Susan R. Easterbrooks ◽  
Joan M. Laughton
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Hard Of Hearing ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
School Age ◽  
Story Grammar ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
Better Than

Research on children with normal hearing shows that the word-processed narratives they produce are better than their handwritten narratives. Hearing children come to school with prior experience in narrating stories, and in school they learn to transfer this to written narrative form. However, children who are deaf and hard of hearing have less experience with storytelling than their same-age hearing peers, and putting stories into written form is a challenge. The purpose of this study was to compare the handwritten narratives of students who are deaf or hard of hearing with their word-processed narratives to see if the benefits experienced by hearing students hold true for students who are deaf. Twenty middle-school age students were asked to provide a narrative using cartoons as stimuli for obtaining written and word-processed samples. Results were compared for length of t-unit, narrative level, and story grammar. For the subjects in this study, the word-processed samples received higher scores for length of t-unit than did the handwritten products, indicating that word-processing encourages more complete products than handwriting. Implications are discussed.

Generalization of and Effects of Pre-Exposure on Color-Avoidance Learning by Red-Winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus)

The Auk ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Russell Mason ◽  
Russell F. Reidinger
Keyword(s):  
Avoidance Learning ◽  
Prey Selection ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Agelaius Phoeniceus ◽  
Aversion Learning ◽  
Food Aversion ◽  
Feeding Context ◽  
Empirical Means

Abstract We report two experiments designed to assess whether quality of color (and shades) influences food-aversion learning by Red-winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus). In Experiment 1, Red-wings were given food paired with one of two shades of red or green followed by toxicant-induced sickness. In subsequent tests for generalization of the learned aversions, avoidance of red was generalized broadly to other shades of red, whereas avoidance of green appeared to be relatively stimulus specific. In Experiment 2, we pre-exposed Red-wings to a single shade of red or green in a feeding context for 4 days. Then the birds were conditioned as in Experiment 1 and tested for expression of learned color aversions. Although pre-exposure weakened expression of aversions to both colors, such effects were more pronounced for green. The effects were greater for birds pre-exposed to the conditioning color in close association with the food than for birds pre-exposed to the conditioning color away from food. Generalization of conditioned aversions and resistance to the effects of pre-exposure may reflect adaptations of Red-wings for prey selection. It would appear adaptive for birds to generalize avoidance learning broadly for conspicuously colored, noxious prey and to exhibit such learning regardless of prior experience with the color. Conversely, because few cryptically colored (e.g. green) prey are noxious, it would be adaptive for learning to be specific for the noxious individuals alone. Finally, we believe that the generalization of learned aversions could serve as a useful criterion in selecting appropriate color stimuli for use in bird control (i.e. repellency) and that the methods presented here could provide one empirical means of assessing such generalizations.

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