LEARNING AND INTEGRATION OF BEHAVIORAL SEQUENCES

行为序列的学习和整合

基本信息

批准号：
2244976
负责人：
HERBERT S. TERRACE
金额：
$ 26.31万
依托单位：
COLUMBIA UNIV NEW YORK MORNINGSIDE
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
1986
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
1986-04-01 至 1999-03-31
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

How are behavioral sequences learned and integrated? The proposed research seeks to gain insight into processes underlying serially organized behavior by studying its cognitive development in animals. That strategy eliminates two factors that complicate the study of serially organized behavior in human subjects: language and experience with serial tasks. The investigation of serial learning in animals also provides a comparative perspective of different mechanisms of serially organized behavior. How arbitrary sequences are learned and integrated will be studied through recently developed techniques for training pigeons and monkeys to produce and recall lists of arbitrary stimuli. In the "simultaneous" chaining paradigm, all of the stimuli and opportunities to respond are available simultaneously, a key feature of serial tasks used in verbal learning experiments on human subjects. Only the configuration of list items is changed from trial to trial. Since nothing in the subject's external environment changes as it performs the sequence, exteroceptive feedback cannot explain its ability to produce the required sequence. Nor can proprioceptive feedback: each item appears equally often in each possible position. Recall is trained by a matching- to-successive-samples paradigm in which the subject is required to produce, as a simultaneous chain, lists displayed as the sample. In most instances, lists will consist of digitized color photographs that are displayed on a touch-sensitive video monitor. The nature of representations that mediate sequence production will be studied by determining (1) how list learning changes with successive lists, (2) a monkey s and a pigeon's ability to "chunk" the sequences it recognizes and/or produces, (3) a subject's knowledge of the ordinal position of items in a list, (4) how shifts in the configuration of the list items during the execution of the list effect performance, (5) how learning lists of a particular length effect the acquisition of longer or shorter lists, and (6) whether pigeons and monkeys remember photographs used as list items as unitary objects or as unorganized sets of features. The results of these experiments should provide an animal model of serial learning and an evolutionary perspective for the contribution of verbal mediation to the organization of human serial behavior. The proposed research should also have two important interdisciplinary ramifications. It can provide preparations for studying the neural control of serially organized behavior. The non-verbal serial tasks that will be used with pigeons-and monkeys can also be used with preverbal children in ways that would reveal the contributions that language subsequently makes to the basic cognitive skills needed to perform those tasks.

行为序列如何学习和整合？提议研究旨在深入了解串行的流程通过研究动物的认知发展来组织行为。那策略消除了两个因素复杂的因素人类主题中的有组织行为：语言和串行经验任务。对动物连续学习的调查也提供了串行组织不同机制的比较观点行为。如何学习和整合任意序列通过最近开发的用于训练鸽子和的技术猴子产生和回忆任意刺激的清单。在 “同时”封闭范式，所有的刺激和机会响应同时可用，这是串行任务的关键功能用于人类受试者的言语学习实验。只有列表项目的配置从试验更改为试验。因为什么都没有在主题的外部环境中，它会在执行顺序，外部感受反馈无法解释其产生的能力所需的序列。本体感受反馈也不能：每个项目都会出现在每个可能的位置中，经常同样。召回受到匹配训练 - 需要受试者的待办事项样本范式作为同时链的生产列表显示为样本。大多数实例，列表将包括数字化的彩色照片显示在接触敏感的视频监视器上。的本质介导序列产生的表示形式将由确定（1）列表学习如何随连续列表变化，（2）a 猴子和鸽子的能力“缩小”其识别的序列和/或产生，（3）受试者对列表中的项目，（4）列表项的配置中如何变化在执行列表效果绩效期间，（5）如何学习特定长度的列表效果较长或较短的获取清单，（6）鸽子和猴子是否记住照片将项目列为单一对象或无组织的功能集。这这些实验的结果应提供串行动物模型学习和对口头贡献的进化观点调解人类序列行为的组织。提议研究还应具有两个重要的跨学科分析。它可以提供研究串行神经控制的准备有组织的行为。将与鸽子和猴子也可以与前言儿童一起使用将揭示语言随后对执行这些任务所需的基本认知技能。