Effects of Aging on Conditional Visuomotor Learning for Grasping and Lifting Eccentrically Weighted Objects

Explicit knowledge of object center of mass or CM location fails to guide anticipatory scaling of digit forces necessary for dexterous manipulation. We previously showed that allowing young adults to choose where to grasp the object entailed an ability to use arbitrary color cues about object CM location to gradually minimize object tilt across several trials. This conditional learning was achieved through accurate anticipatory modulation of digit position using the color cues. However, it remains unknown how aging affects the ability to use explicit color cues about object CM location to modulate digit placement for dexterous manipulation. We instructed healthy older and young adults to learn a manipulation task using arbitrary color cues about object CM location. Subjects were required to exert clockwise, counterclockwise, or no torque on the object according to the color cue and lift the object while minimizing its tilt. Older adults produced larger torque error during conditional learning trials, resulting in a slower rate of learning than young adults. Importantly, older adults showed impaired anticipatory modulation of digit position when information of the CM location was available via explicit color cues. The older adults also did not modulate their digit forces to compensate for this impairment. Interestingly, however, anticipatory modulation of digit position was intact in the same individuals when information of object CM location was implicitly conveyed from trial-to-trial. We discuss our findings in relation to age-dependent changes in processes and neural network essential for learning dexterous manipulation using arbitrary color cue about object property.

Ambiguity in European seasonal comparative research: how decisions on modelling shape results on inequality in learning?

Summer break study designs are used in educational research to disentangle school from non-school contributions to social performance gaps. The summer breaks provide a natural experimental setting that allows for the measurement of learning progress when school is not in session, which can help to capture the unfolding of social disparities in learning that are the result of non-school influences. Seasonal comparative research has a longer tradition in the U.S. than in Europe, where it is only at its beginning. As such, summer setback studies in Europe lack a common methodological framework, impairing the possibility to draw lines across studies because they differ in their inherent focus on social inequality in learning progress. This paper calls for greater consideration of the parameterization of “unconditional” or “conditional” learning progress in European seasonal comparative research. Different approaches to the modelling of learning progress answer different research questions. Based on real data and constructed examples, this paper outlines in an intuitive fashion the different dynamics in inequality that may be simultaneously present in the survey data and distinctly revealed depending on whether one or the other modeling strategy of learning progress is chosen. An awareness of the parameterization of learning progress is crucial for an accurate interpretation of the findings and their international comparison.

The basal ganglia corticostriatal loops and conditional learning

Brief maneuvering of the literature as to the various roles attributed to the basal ganglia corticostriatal circuits in a variety of cognitive processes such as working memory, selective attention, and category learning has inspired us to investigate the interplay of the two major basal ganglia open-recurrent loops, namely, visual and executive loops specifically the possible involvement of their overlap in conditional learning. We propose that the interaction of the visual and executive loops reflected through their cortical overlap in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DL-PFC), lateral orbitofrontal cortex (LO-PFC), and presupplementary motor area (SMA) plays an instrumental role preliminary first in forming associations between a series of correct responses following similar stimuli and then in shifting, abstracting, and generalizing conditioned responses. The premotor and supplementary motor areas have been shown essential to producing a sequence of movements while the SMA is engaged in monitoring complex movements. In light of the recent studies, we will suggest that the interaction of visual and executive loops could strengthen or weaken learned associations following different reward values. Furthermore, we speculate that the overlap of the visual and executive loops can account for the switching between the associative vs. rule-based category learning systems.

Modulation of Grasp Parameters using Arbitrary Cues about Object Property in Older Adults

ABSTRACTDexterous manipulation may be guided by explicit information about object property. Such a manipulation requires fine modulation of digit position and forces using explicit cues. Young adults can form arbitrary cue-object property associations for accurate modulation of digit position and forces. Aging, in contrast, might alter this conditional learning. Older adults are impaired in accurately modulating their digit forces using explicit cues about object property. However, it is not known whether older adults can use explicit cues about object property to modulate digit position. In this study, we instructed ten healthy older and ten young adults to learn a manipulation task using arbitrary color cues about object center of mass location. Subjects were required to exert clockwise, counterclockwise, or no torque on the object according to the color cue and lift the object while minimizing its tilt across sixty trials. Older adults produced larger torque error during the conditional learning trials than young adults. This resulted in a significantly slower rate of learning in older adults. Older, but not young adults, failed to modulate their digit position and forces using the color cues. Similar aging-related differences were not observed while learning the task using implicit knowledge about object property. Our findings suggest that aging impairs the ability to use explicit cues about object property to modulate both digit position and forces for dexterous manipulation. We discuss our findings in relation to age-related changes in the processes and the neural network for conditional learning.

Prestige and content biases together shape the cultural transmission of narratives

Context-based cultural transmission biases such as prestige are thought to have been a primary driver in shaping the dynamics of human cultural evolution. However, few empirical studies have measured the importance of prestige relative to other effects, such as the content biases present within transmitted information. Here, we report the findings of an experimental transmission study designed to compare the simultaneous effects of a high- or low-prestige model with the presence of content containing social, survival, emotional, moral, rational, or counterintuitive information. Results from multimodel inference reveal that prestige is a significant factor in determining salience and recall, but that several content biases, specifically social, survival, negative emotional, and biological counterintuitive information, are significantly more influential. Further, we find evidence that prestige serves as a conditional learning strategy when no content cues are available. Our results demonstrate that content biases serve a vital and underappreciated role in cultural transmission.

The impact of learning opportunities on the development of learning and decision-making: an experiment with passerine birds

Developmental context has been shown to influence learning abilities later in life, namely through experiments with nutritional and/or environmental constraints (i.e. lack of enrichment). However, little is known about the extent to which opportunities for learning affect the development of animal cognition, even though such opportunities are known to influence human cognitive development. We exposed young zebra finches ( Taenopygia guttata ) ( n = 26) to one of three experimental conditions, i.e. an environment where (i) colour cues reliably predicted the presence of food (associative learning), (ii) a combination of two-colour cues reliably predicted the presence of food (conditional learning), or (iii) colour cues were non-informative (control). After conducting two different discrimination tasks, our results showed that experience with predictive cues can cause increased choice accuracy and decision-making speed. Our first learning task showed that individuals in the associative learning treatment outperformed the control treatment, while task 2 showed that individuals in the conditional learning treatment had shorter latencies when making choices compared with the control treatment. We found no support for a speed–accuracy trade-off. This dataset provides a rare longitudinal and experimental examination of the effect of predictive versus non-predictive cues during development on the cognition of adult animals. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.

Imam Al Ghazali dan Kontribusinya dalam Ilmu Jiwa

This study aims to show Al Ghazali’s role in knowledge building of psychology and his theory in behaviors among the modern psychology. Al Ghazali was known of the most influential scholar in the culture of his era, especially in the field of psychology, philosophy, and Sufi. He was scholar who firstly declared the psychology is a science about human and named it as a science of interpersonal of human (muamalah), and he came with the Conditional Learning Theory many age before Pavlov, Russian Physiologic Scholar who acclaimed as the funding father of that theory.In compare the Al Ghazali’s behaviors theory with behaviors theory of modern psychology especially in behaviors ingredients has much similarity, but has hugedifferent in the source of some behaviors. He considered that heart (Al qalbu) not mind, with it various meaning as the source of some behaviors. His conclusion in this matter based on the Alqur’an and Assunnah guidences.Some Moslem Scholars in Islamic countries that used to wondered and took unselectively of western psychology should not ignore the treasure of knowledge and research produced by ancestor of them, cause it believed more related to Muslim character and behaviors. And the Muslim Scholar must remember that the truth is not merely belong to western psychology result of study and research but belong of human at large as well.