S1 (FriAM 1-65) - The Psychonomic Society

Friday Afternoon Papers 113–119
& J. DAVID SMITH, JUSTIN J. COUCHMAN, & MARIANA V. C.
COUTINHO, University at Buffalo—Researchers continue to explore
nonhuman animals’ metacognitive capacity, but some studies still encourage
competing low-level, behavioral descriptions of so-called
“Uncertainty” responses. We evaluated the force of these behavioral
descriptions as six capuchin monkeys completed two densitydiscrimination
tasks. In one task, difficult stimuli could be avoided
through an Uncertainty response. This task allowed the first evaluation
of uncertainty responding by a New World primate species. In the
other task, the same stimuli could be rewarded through a Middle response.
Capuchins essentially did not use the Uncertainty response at
all. However, they used the Middle response naturally and easily. This
indicates that the Uncertainty response is responsive to a different and
subtler psychological signal that capuchins did not monitor compared
to the Middle response. These results undermine behavioral interpretations
of some uncertainty-monitoring performances and highlight
questions concerning the nature of the different and subtler psychological
signal that occasions the Uncertainty response.
4:50–5:05 (113)
What Is Learned When Concept Learning Fails. ANTHONY A.
WRIGHT, University of Texas Medical School, Houston, & JEFFREY S.
KATZ, Auburn University—Rhesus monkeys gradually learned the
same/different abstract concept as the training set was expanded from
8 to 128 color pictures. What they learned (or more accurately did not
learn) prior to concept learning is the topic of this talk. Other rhesus
monkeys trained with a subset of the training pairs were tested with the
untrained pairs following acquisition. These and other results show that
it is unlikely these subjects learned the training-pair configurations, the
if–then rules for training pairs, or default responses to the more numerous
stimulus-pair class (different pairs). Ruling out these possibilities
suggests that the relationship between the training-pair pictures
was being learned but that this learning did not generalize to novel stimuli
either because it was tied to the specific features of the training stimuli
or because performance was disrupted by the novel stimuli.
5:10–5:25 (114)
Binding in Visual Short-Term Memory by Pigeons. JEFFREY S.
KATZ, Auburn University, & ROBERT G. COOK, Tufts University—
Pigeons were trained in a new procedure to test for visual binding errors
between the feature dimensions of color and shape. Pigeons
learned to discriminate a target compound from 15 nontarget compounds
constructed from four color and shape values by choosing one
of two hoppers in a two-hopper choice task. The similarity of the target
to nontarget stimuli influenced choice responding. Next, pigeons
learned to detect a target compound presented with a nontarget compound
in the same trial under conditions of simultaneity and sequentiality.
Nontarget trials were arranged to allow for the testing of binding
errors. Binding errors occurred at the start of two-item training but
disappeared with experience indicating the impact of learning on
binding in visual short-term memory.
Working Memory
Beacon B, Friday Afternoon, 3:10–5:30
Chaired by Carmi Schooler, National Institute of Mental Health
3:10–3:25 (115)
Brain Lesion and Memory Functioning: Short-Term Memory
Deficit Is Independent of Lesion Location. CARMI SCHOOLER,
LESLIE J. CAPLAN, & ANDREW J. REVELL, Section on Socio-
Environmental Studies, NIMH, IRP, NIH, & ANDRES M. SALAZAR
& JORDAN GRAFMAN, Cognitive Neuroscience Section, NINDS,
IRP, NIH—We analyzed the effects of patterns of brain lesions from
open penetrating head injuries on memory performance in participants
of the Vietnam Head Injury Study (Grafman et al., 1988).
Classes of lesion patterns were determined by mixture modeling
(Muthén & Muthén, 2004). Memory performance, at least a decade
18
after the injury, was assessed for short-term memory, semantic memory,
verbal episodic memory, and visual episodic memory. The striking
finding was that short-term memory deficits were observed in all
classes of brain-injured individuals, regardless of lesion location pattern.
Deficits in semantic memory, verbal episodic memory, and visual
episodic memory depended on lesion location, in a manner
roughly consistent with the existing neuropsychological literature.
The theoretical and clinical implications of the striking, seemingly,
permanent short-term memory deficits in individuals with open penetrating
head injuries are discussed.
3:30–3:45 (116)
Working Memory, Executive Control, and Mind-Wandering in
Lab and in Life. JENNIFER C. MCVAY & MICHAEL J. KANE, University
of North Carolina, Greensboro (read by Michael J. Kane)—
The executive-attention theory of working memory capacity (WMC)
proposes that WMC span tasks predict individual differences in fluid
cognitive abilities primarily because span reflects domain-general,
attention-control abilities (Engle & Kane, 2004). Supportive evidence
comes from findings that variation in WMC predicts task performance
requiring conscious control of habitual responses or attentional
focus; in particular, subjects with lower WMC exhibit frequent “goal
neglect,” where they understand and recall task goals but fail to act
according to those goals in the moment. Here, we explored whether
WMC-related variation in goal neglect was mediated by the propensity
for off-task thought, or mind-wandering. Thought-sampling methods
probed subjects about their thought content during either daily-life activities
(via programmed Palm Pilots) or computerized laboratory
tasks of executive control. WMC predicted mind-wandering rates during
cognitively demanding daily-life activities and during laboratory
executive tasks; moreover, individual differences in executive-task
performance was jointly predicted by WMC and mind-wandering rate.
3:50–4:05 (117)
The Serial-Order Problem in Short-Term Memory. BENNET B.
MURDOCK, University of Toronto—Two main findings that any
model of serial order must explain are the list length effect and the
serial-position effect. Why can subjects recall 3–4 words perfectly but
no more than 1 when list length exceeds memory span? Why the primacy
and recency that was discovered before Ebbinghaus? A revision
of the TODAM serial-order model shows that this is a natural consequence
of a distributed memory system which also produces primacy,
and recency comes from anti-learning. This revision also solves most
of the problems that are commonly cited to discredit chaining models,
and extensions to list learning will be discussed.
4:10–4:25 (118)
Resolution in Visual Working Memory Is Determined by the Number
Rather Than the Complexity of the Stored Items. EDWARD
AWH & BRIAN BARTON, University of Oregon—Using a change
detection task, Awh, Barton, and Vogel (2007) observed that a fixed
number of items were represented in visual working memory regardless
of complexity. However, because mnemonic resolution is limited,
some changes between complex objects were missed—even when the
critical item was in memory—because of errors in comparing the sample
and test. Using the probability of these comparison errors to define
mnemonic resolution, we found that the number of items that an
individual could maintain did not predict the resolution of those memories,
suggesting that number and resolution are distinct facets of
memory ability. Nevertheless, there are strong interactions between
these factors, with monotonic reductions in resolution for each additional
item stored. By contrast, wide variations in the total information
load of the sample array had no influence on mnemonic resolution
when the number of items in memory was held constant.
4:30–4:45 (119)
Dissecting Effects of Complexity and Similarity on Visual Working
Memory. YUHONG V. JIANG, University of Minnesota, WONMOK