Knowledge that Transforms

We argue herein that typical training procedures are far from optimal. The goat of training in real-world settings is, or should be, to support two aspects of posttraining performance: (a) the level of performance in the long term and (b) the capability to transfer that training to related tasks and altered contexts. The implicit or explicit assumption of those persons responsible for training is that the procedures that enhance performance and speed improvement during training will necessarily achieve these two goals. However, a variety of experiments on motor and verbal learning indicate that this assumption is often incorrect. Manipulations that maximize performance during training can be detrimental in the long term; conversely, manipulations that degrade the speed of acquisition can support the long-term goals of training. The fact that there are parallel findings in the motor and verbal domains suggests that principles of considerable generality can be deduced to upgrade training procedures.

Human adults with normal vision, with three types of color-blindness, or with complete absence of vision since birth rank-ordered the similarities of all pairs of colors corresponding to nine hue names. When presented with the names only, subjects with any color vision produced rankings for which multidimensional scaling yielded Newton's color circle. When subjects were presented with the colors themselves, the recovered color circle remained the same for the normally sighted but collapsed along the red-green dimension for the color-blind. Based on their rankings by color names, the totally blind subjects all fell outside the range of the color-normal subjects but partly overlapped the color-deficient subjects; a rare rod monochromat roughly approximated the color-normal subjects. These results, along with those of Marmor (1978) and Izmailov and Sokolov (this issue), suggest how visual experience, language, and innate structure contribute to the mental representation of colors.

Because of its biological adaptive value, wariness of heights is widely believed to be innate or under maturational control. In this report, we present evidence contrary to this hypothesis, and show the importance of locomotor experience for emotional development. Four studies bearing on this conclusion have shown that (1) when age is held constant, locomotor experience accounts for wariness of heights; (2) “artificial” experience locomoting in a walker generates evidence of wariness of heights; (3) an orthopedically handicapped infant tested longitudinally did not show wariness of heights so long as he had no locomotor experience; and (4) regardless of the age when infants begin to crawl, it is the duration of locomotor experience and not age that predicts avoidance of heights. These findings suggest that when infants begin to crawl, experiences generated by locomotion make possible the development of wariness of heights.

One of the basic axioms of the rational theory of decision under uncertainty is Savage's (1954) sure-thing principle (STP) It states that if prospect x is preferred to y knowing that Event A occurred, and if x is preferred to y knowing that A did not occur, then x should be preferred to y even when it is not known whether A occurred We present examples in which the decision maker has good reasons for accepting x if A occurs, and different reasons for accepting x if A does not occur Not knowing whether or not A occurs, however, the decision maker may lack a clear reason for accepting x and may opt for another option We suggest that, in the presence of uncertainty, people are often reluctant to think through the implications of each outcome and, as a result, may violate STP This interpretation is supported by the observation that STP is satisfied when people are made aware of their preferences given each outcome

The cognitive “revolution” in psychology introduced a new concept of explanation and somewhat novel methods of gathering and interpreting evidence. These innovations assume that it is essential to explain complex phenomena at several levels, symbolic as well as physiological; complementary, not competitive. As with the other sciences, such complementarity makes possible a comprehensive and unified experimental psychology. Contemporary cognitive psychology also introduced complementarity of another kind, drawing upon, and drawing together, both the behaviorist and the Gestalt traditions.

Availability of human memories for specific items shows reliable relationships to frequency, recency, and pattern of prior exposures to the item. These relationships have defied a systematic theoretical treatment. A number of environmental sources ( New York Times, parental speech, electronic mail) are examined to show that the probability that a memory will be needed also shows reliable relationships to frequency, recency, and pattern of prior exposures. Moreover, the environmental relationships are the same as the memory relationships. It is argued that human memory has the form it does because it is adapted to these environmental relationships. Models for both the environment and human memory are described. Among the memory phenomena addressed are the practice function, the retention function, the effect of spacing of practice, and the relationship between degree of practice and retention.

A number of important models of information processing depend on whether processing is serial or parallel. However, many of the studies purporting to settle the case use weak experimental paradigms or results to draw conclusions. A brief history of the issue is given along with examples from the literature. Then a number of promising methods are presented from a variety of sources with some discussion of their potential. A brief discussion of the topic with regard to overall issues of model testing and applications concludes the paper.

Recognition that organisms have a developmental history, exhibit behavior that is uniquely suited to or constrained by features of their immediate environment, and adapt to new environments is central to current psychobiological thought. Unfortunately, these concepts have in the past been restricted largely to the study of postnatal behavioral development. However, recent extension of these concepts to the fetus as an active and interactive organism that resides within a specialized, intrauterine niche is proving to be a profitable approach toward understanding the origins of behavioral organization during development.

Scientists and philosophers have searched for centuries for a parsimonious answer to the question of what constitutes beauty. We approached this problem from both an evolutionary and information-processing rationale and predicted that faces representing the average value of the population would be consistently judged as attractive. To evaluate this hypothesis, we digitized samples of male and female faces, mathematically averaged them, and had adults judge the attractiveness of both the individual faces and the computer-generated composite images. Both male (three samples) and female (three samples) composite faces were judged as more attractive than almost all the individual faces comprising the composites. A strong linear trend also revealed that the composite faces became more attractive as more faces were entered. These data showing that attractive faces are only average are consistent with evolutionary pressures that favor characteristics close to the mean of the population and with cognitive processes that favor prototypical category members.