Transcript 11 - smw15.org

PSY 445: Learning & Memory
Chapter 11
Spatial, Motor-Skill, & Implicit Learning
Procedural Knowledge
The ability to quickly perform various cognitive,
perceptual, and motor operations
 Helps us to achieve skilled behavior; appears mostly implicit
Three types will be covered in this chapter:
Spatial Learning

Knowing how to get from place to place in the environment
Motor-skill Learning

Knowing how to perform coordinated bodily movements quickly
and accurately
Implicit Learning

Knowing the underlying rules that govern complex sequences of
behavior
Route vs. Survey Maps
Route Maps
The knowledge of a series of routes, directions, or paths
through a spatial environment
Characterized by knowledge of sequential locations
Survey Knowledge
An abstract representation of the environment, placing
specific routes in context with the surrounding area
Ariel overview
Cognitive map
Place vs. Response Studies
The great Debate: Behaviorists vs. Cognitivists
Cognitivists
• Learning takes place in the mind, not in behavior
• The formation of mental representations of the elements of a
task and the discovery of how these elements are related
• Forming a cognitive map of the environment (Tolman, 1948)
• Learning the correct place
Behaviorists
• Learning involves the formation of associations between
specific actions and specific events (stimuli) in the
environment (Hull, 1949)
• Learning the correct response
Place vs. Response Studies
Series of studies with inconsistent results (results
appear to be influenced by who the researchers
were)
In one experiment, after rats received the reward, the
researchers simply rotated a maze
Tolman’s theory (place) would predict that the rats
would check their cognitive map for the location of the
maze within the room, and make a left turn to
compensate for the change in starting position
Hull’s theory (response) would predict rats would
make a right turn as they have been trained to do
See next slide for results 
Place vs. Response Studies
Tolman, Ritchie, & Kalish (1946, 1947)
 Rats made left turn
 Used maze with flat alleys, no walls, and
elevated
 Distinctive features in the room were clearly
seen from the maze; encouraged cognitive
learning
Hull (1949)
 Rats made right turn
 Maze alleys were enclosed by walls
 Maze itself was surrounded by curtains
 No prominent cues for the rat to orient itself
within the room; encouraged response
learning
Edward Tolman
(1886-1959)
Clark Hull
(1884-1952)
Place vs. Response Studies
Tolman, Ritchie, & Kalish (1946)
This maze had no walls or roof so
that rats could see “landmarks” in the
room such as a window, door, or
lamp.
On a random half of the trials, the
rats started from Start Box 1, and on
the other half they started from Start
Box 2.
Start 2
Goal 2
Goal 1
GROUP P always found food in Goal Box 1.
Hull (1949)
This maze had walls, curtains, roof and no prominent cues.
Start 1
On a random half of the trials, the rats started from Start Box 1, and on the other
half they started from Start Box 2.
GROUP R found food in Goal Box 1 when they started from Start Box 1 but did NOT
receive food in Goal Box 2 when they started from Start Box 2.
Place vs. Response Studies
BUT WHO WOULD LEARN FASTER???
Start 2
Cognitive theory predicted
that GROUP P would learn
faster because they only had
to learn one cognitive map.
Goal 2
Behavior theory predicted
GROUP R would learn faster
because they only had to
learn one sequence of
movements at the choice
point — the correct turn.
Goal 1
Start 1
Place vs. Response Studies
Start 2
What’s YOUR prediction?
Are you a behaviorist or a cognitivist?
GROUP R
GROUP P
Goal 2
Goal 1
Start 1
Tolman, Ritchie, & Kalish (1946)
Place vs. Response Studies
Start 2
What’s YOUR prediction?
Are you a behaviorist or a cognitivist?
GROUP R
GROUP P
Tolman’s studies found
that Group P learned
faster.
Goal 2
Goal 1
But
Start 1
Later studies by Hull (1949) found that if the
maze had a roof so the rats couldn’t see things
in the room, response learning was faster.
Tolman, Ritchie, & Kalish (1946)
Place vs. Response Studies
Interpretation
Both response and place learning occur. Which type
is faster depends on what cues are available. So
both the cognitive and behavioral views turned out
to be right!
The place vs. response controversy taught us that either
specific responses or cognitive maps may be learned:
rats and people are flexible in their use of whatever
cues are available
The Radial Maze
Olton & Samuelson (1976)
Procedure
 8 arms
 All baited
 Rat visits arms until all food is found
 Number of visits is behavioral measure
 8 is minimum
 Pattern of visits is also recorded
Radial Maze 
The Radial Maze
Task requires procedural memory
Rat must learn rules of the game: layout of maze, return
trips to visited arms should be avoided, and so on
Task also requires working memory
Rat must remember where it has been in order not to
repeat a visit
At end of trial, rat can erase working memory and retain
procedural memory
The Radial Maze
Results
Rats do very well in this task, achieving an accuracy
level of 7.6 different maze arms among the first 8
choices after only 15 trials
Interpretation
Cognitive-mapping is convincingly demonstrated
Click on picture 
Olton & Samuelson (1976)
After 7 days of training
The Radial Maze
Alternative Explanations
1. Rats just enter arms in sequence thus assuring
themselves of getting food and easing WM
requirements
No - rats do not visit same arms in same order every
day - pattern of arm visits is nearly random
2. Perhaps rats can smell food at end of arms or smell
scents in visited arms
No - these possibilities have also been eliminated as
dousing maze with after-shave lotion does not impair
performance
Also, if after rat has made several choices, arms that it
has chosen are again baited with food, then rat does
not return to those arms
The Radial Maze
Extramaze Cues
 Rats seem to be tuned in to these cues which are outside the
maze
 Apparently, this allows them to keep track of entered and
unentered maze arms
 If one rotates maze so that spatial cues outside maze no
longer give accurate information about where rat has and has
not been, then rat’s performance deteriorates
 Even though odor cues are available, rat makes mistakes by
visiting locations that used to contain unvisited arms, but now,
after maze rotation, contain arms that were already visited
 It seems as if rat masters task by learning the maze perhaps
by constructing a cognitive map in procedural memory
 Rat then uses its working memory to keep track of where it
has already been
Morris Water Maze
Morris (1981)
Procedure
 A rat is placed in a small
swimming pool in which the water
is clouded by the addition of
powdered milk
 A hidden platform is located just
under the water; rats’ goal is to
learn the location of this platform
 From trial to trial, the starting
location of the pool is varied
 Animal must learn the location of
the platform on the basis of cues
of the room
Click on picture 
Morris Water Maze
Morris Water Maze
Results
On first trials, animals spend much time searching
for the platform
Over trials, the animals become faster and follow
more direct routes to get to the platform
Interpretation
Rat appears to be encoding spatial relationships
Morris (1981)
Maze Learning & The Brain
SPATIAL LEARNING – ROLE OF THE HIPPOCAMPUS
 Hippocampus
Maze Learning & The Brain
 Hippocampal lesions – humans, other mammals
 not all memories lost
 memories of facts or events (explicit, declarative,
episodic) impaired or lost
 post-lesion memory impaired only
 pre-lesion memory intact
 procedural, implicit memories ok
 important for acquisition & memory
of types of new information
 spatial information in particular
LIMBIC
SYSTEM 
SPATIAL LEARNING – ROLE OF THE HIPPOCAMPUS
 Effects of hippocampal lesions – rats, water maze
 spatial impairment  longer circuitous routes
 swimming impaired or just enjoy a good swim?
 3-part experiment
 spatial task  impaired ability to find platform
 cued task  can swim, would rather not
 spatial task  still impaired... no memory!
Triple Dissociation of Limbic Area
McDonald & White (1993)
Hippocampal lesions caused impaired learning in regular radial –
maze task
They consistently enter already visited arms
Lesions of amygdala impaired association learning
They could not figure out that only lighted maze arms had food
Lesions of striatum impaired learning of reinforcement
They did not repeat choices of reinforced arms
In each case, the other two forms of learning were not affected
Landmarks
There are certain elements of the environment that by
virtue of their distinctive features (size or shape) or their
meaning (historical or social) stand out from other
features of the environment
• The extramaze cues used by rats in place learning or the
radial maze – doors, windows, light fixtures, etc.
• Landmark recognition does not seem to fade with age as is
the case with spatial memory overall
External Landmarks
 readily perceived
 importance of learning the environment
 direct sensory input (visual observation)
Schemas in Spatial Memory
Spatial knowledge can be organized
hierarchically in schemas
Spatial schemas have two prominent effects on
memory:
Distortion in cognitive maps
Organization in spatial memory
Distortion in Cognitive Maps
Spatial schemas distort recall due to the averaging, normalizing,
or rounding off that occurs when a generalized map is acquired
Stevens & Coupe (1978)
 State locations are often used (incorrectly) to infer the relative
locations of cities
Spatial schemas seem to have a preferred perspective
We use our cognitive map as a guide by aligning images with
our environment
Scholl (1987)
 College students were asked to point in the direction of unseen
campus locations
 They were better able to do this if the locations were in front of them
Organization in Spatial Memory
The recall of verbal material is often marked by
organization
Items are systematically related or which share preexperimental associations are recalled together
during output
Spatial memory also shows organization as reflected
by the presence of organization during output
Organization in Spatial Memory
Menzel (1973)
Procedure
 The mental map of young chimpanzees was tested on a 1-acre
enclosure
 As one researcher walked the chimp around the field, a second
researcher (in full view of the chimp) placed pieces of banana and
lettuce
 The researchers crisscrossed the field distributing the food in random
fashion
Results
 Chimps in searching for hidden food, maximized the rate of food
acquisition by using a least-distance strategy
 This knowledge of distances was also combined with the ability to
measure angles, allowing them to find out the hidden place of food,
symmetrically opposed to another one
 They also bypassed the lettuce to get the fruit first – showing a priority
was put on the rewards
The Development of Spatial Memory in Children
Cornell & Heth (1979)
Procedure
 Infants seated in mothers laps with small projection screens
on either side
 Slides depicting random shapes were projected to one side
every 10 seconds and a constant checkerboard pattern
appeared simultaneously on the opposite side
 Infants orient to novel stimuli and look less at repetitive stimuli
so they learned to look at the changing patterns
 To test whether the infants had learned turn responses or a
cognitive map, the mother turned the chairs around to face in
the opposite direction
 Therefore, the orientation with respect to the novel versus
repeated slides was rotated
The Development of Spatial Memory in Children
Cornell & Heth (1979)
Results
The youngest infants (4 months old) continued to
turn in the same direction as before – response
learning
The older infants (12 months old) correctly
compensated for change of orientation within the
room and now turned in the opposite direction –
place learning
Motor Skills Learning
The acquisition of precisely adjusted
movements in which the amount,
direction, and duration of responding
corresponds to variations in
regulating stimuli
Pursuit Rotor Task
 The goal is to keep a stylus on a fixed
point on a rotating disk
Mirror Tracing Task
 The goal is to follow the outline of an
object with a pencil or stylus with visual
guidance coming from a mirror
Motor-skills Learning: Implicit or Explicit?
Both implicit (procedural) knowledge and explicit
(declarative) knowledge are at times evident in
motor-skills learning
Sometimes implicit – we can’t really describe our actions
 Alzheimer’s patients have no trouble with the mirror-tracing
task yet are grossly impaired in declarative memory tasks
(recall of word lists, etc.)
Sometimes explicit – conscious intention to learn, verbal
self-guidance, knowledge of the goal, etc.
Amount of Practice
Power Law of Practice
The power law of practice is a very general law in
human cognition, and in particular in human learning
The higher the level of expertise and the time spent
on the task, the more difficult it is to improve
(principle of diminishing returns)
Schedules of Practice
Spaced practice advantage applies to motor-skills
learning here too
Baddeley & Longman (1987)
Procedure
British postal workers practiced typing
Participants were divided into four groups who
received either one or two training sessions per day
with each session either one or two hours in length
See this design next slide
Schedules of Practice
How to best use 60 hours of training to
maximize performance and learning?
Baddeley & Longman (1987)
1 Session
2 Sessions
1 hour
12 weeks
6 weeks
2 hour
6 weeks
3 weeks
Baddeley & Longman (1978): Results
Practice
# of hrs to Number of hrs
Schedule
learn keyboard to type 80/min
1 hr / 1 session
34.9
55
1 hr / 2 session
43
75
2 hr / 1 session
43
67
2 hr / 2 session
49.7
80+
Correct # of Keystrokes as a function of
practice distribution
Baddeley & Longman (1978)
Practice-Independent Learning
The relatively permanent change in behavioral
repertoire occurring without additional experience
Walker (2003)
Procedure
Students asked to type a 5-number sequence as fast
as they could
After a single session, participants could type this 22
times in 30 seconds
Retesting after 12 wakeful hours or after 12 hours
that included their regular amount of sleep
Practice-Independent Learning
Walker (2003)
Results
Retesting after 12 wakeful hours = 24 times in 30s
Retesting after 12 hours (regular sleep) = 27 times in
30s
Interpretation
The time spent sleeping was more effective in
increasing performance
Certain phases of sleep appear to be important for
the long-term consolidation of recently acquired
skills and habits
Knowledge of Results (KR)
Outcome information; feedback
Externally provided information on the success or
accuracy of the response that is given to the
participant after a practice trial
Serves as a basis for corrections on the next trial
Knowledge of Results (KR)
Thorndike (1931)
Procedure
Had students close their eyes while trying to draw 4-inch
lines
3000 lines drawn over 12 sessions
No feedback given
Results
No improvement seen
Interpretation
Do we need knowledge of results? Yes!
Knowledge of Results (KR)
Schmidt et al. (1989)
Procedure
 Participants learned a tracking response; asked to follow a curve
projected on a screen that changes in speed and direction
 Feedback was either given after every trial, every 5th trial, or
every 15th trial
Results
 Consistent feedback helps during acquisition phase
 But after a short 10 minute delay this advantage disappears
 Two days later, the group getting the least feedback does the
best
Interpretation
 Is too much feedback detrimental to performance? Yes, it
appears that this is true as well
Knowledge of Results (KR)
Why would less frequent KR lead to better performance?
Self-Guidance Hypothesis
 Consistent feedback may block the ability to detect one’s own
errors
 We may become too dependent on external KR for error
information
 Individuals may be less likely to attend to their own bodily
kinesthetic feedback and do not learn to recognize good and
poor performance
Wulf & Schmidt (1989)
 Gradually reducing feedback after acquisition seems to lead to
optimal performance
Delayed KR
Would delaying KR lead to better performance?
 Yes - delayed feedback seems to have benefits
 It seems that delaying feedback allows performers to develop
their own error-detection capabilities without interference from
the external KR
 However, there is a caveat to this – if individuals are distracted
during the delay-until-feedback interval, then performance
benefits are lost
Swinnen et al. (1990)
Implicit Learning
Is the process by which knowledge of the
structure of a complex environment is acquired
largely independent of conscious awareness of
specific components of that environment
 Learning that appears to occur without awareness or
intention to learn and often cannot be described in
words what has been learned
 “The Cognitive Unconscious”
Arthur Reber
(born in 1940)
Some Implicit Learning Tasks
Artificial Grammar
Reber (1967)
 Devised an artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm
involving a set of letters instead of words
 The grammar determines which letters can follow which other
letters
Here we are presenting at conference in Chicago in 2013
Artificial Grammar
Reber (1967)
Typical Procedure
 Subjects are shown a series of letter strings that follow
particular complex rules
 Participants are initially not told about the rules
 After this “training phase,” participants are told about the
existence of rules, and have to then classify the next set of
strings into ruleful and unruleful strings (“test phase”)
 AGL rules are usually very complex finite state grammar rules
Artificial Grammar
 Examples of ruleful & unruleful strings:
Ruleful 
VXVS
TPTXVS
Unruleful 
VXXXS
TPTPS
 Typical classification performance at test is significantly above chance
 Subjects are unaware of their knowledge and cannot verbalize the rules
 Reber concluded that participants are implicitly learning the abstract rules
of the grammar
Reber (1967)
Implicit Learning: Serial Reaction
Time (SRT) Task
Nissen & Bullemer (1987)
On each trial a light goes
on
Just press
corresponding button
Unbeknownst to subject, sequence of lights is rule governed
Nissen & Bullemer (1987)
Violates rules
Rule governed
Subjects are sensitive to the presence of the sequence even
when they deny knowing that there was a sequence
Implicit Learning: SRT Task
Some felt that participants had simply practiced
the task more and thus got more efficient at
pressing the buttons
HOWEVER –
Control group (not given repeating patterns)
doesn’t get faster
When you present a sequence that violates the rule
you see slower reaction times
Is procedural learning unaware learning?
No?
Not a lack of awareness, but rather participants
decide not to report information they are unsure of
Some participants are able to report the sequence
in SRT tests and do about as well as the “unaware”
participants
Yes (notice no question mark)
Just too many participants are not able to articulate
how they were successful on these implicit tasks
Some develop a “liking” for a certain grammatical
string
Dissociating categories of implicit learning
Priming and implicit learning are separate domains
Implicit memory vs. implicit learning
Word-fragment completion (Implicit memory) does
not improve with practice; SRT tasks (implicit
learning) does
Expertise
What makes someone and expert?
Talent
Genetics
Practice
Ericksson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer (1993)
These researchers say its practice
Advocates of a 10-year rule
Suggests that there may be an inherited factor but
not so much related to talent as it is to motivation
Implicit Learning:
Expert Knowledge?
Reber (1980)
Too many variables involved – too much to
remember
In explicit learning, we consciously select only the
key variables
In implicit learning, we are unselective and pay
attention to all variables
Few attentional resources are needed
Implicit Learning:
Expert Knowledge?
McGeorge & Burton (1990)
Implicit learning allows us to skip steps
Everything becomes automatic
We become experts
Implicit Learning:
Expert Knowledge?
Example:
Chess experts
Garry Kasparov
From declarative to procedural
Conscious then unconscious…
Acquisition phase  declarative
 Explicit information is being learned (nature of task, rules of
task, limits, exceptions, etc.)
Practice phase  procedural processes begin
 Implicit processes are initiated; less conscious guidance is
required
Test phase  after extended practice procedural
processes dominate
 Task is performed automatically
From declarative to procedural
 Adaptive Control of Thought Theory (Anderson, 1983)
 Declarative stage
 Acquisition of knowledge; conscious processing and
attention is required; heavy reliance on working memory
 Knowledge Compilation stage
 Transition stage where knowledge application starts to become
proceduralized
 Groups of rules or operations are chunked increasing efficiency
 Procedural stage
 Continued practice leads to further strengthening of procedures;
skill refinement
Implicit Learning Applications
Woman suffering from anterograde amnesia
learns to use the computer
It seems implicit systems minimize the retrieval of
wrong information, which might later be mistakenly
recalled (rather than the correct answer)
Spatial Memory Applications
Sense of Direction
 People appear to be pretty good at estimating their sense of
direction
Kozlowski & Bryant (1977)
 Had students rate their sense of direction on a 7-point Likert
Scale
 Strong correlations with accuracy to pointing to unseen
campus buildings, judging the distance between two buildings,
etc.
 Later, after being led back and forth through an underground
tunnel on campus, only students who felt that had a sense of
direction improved in their accuracy in pointing to the end
point
Spatial Memory Applications
Improved Building Design
 The principles of spatial learning can be applied to improving
everyday navigation (for example, helping us to negotiate large
buildings)
Evans et al. (1980)
 Students toured a building either before it was painted of
afterwards
 Those in the “before” condition toured the 4-story building when
all the interior walls were painted beige
 Those in the “after” condition toured the building after it had been
painted with a color-coding scheme to distinguish different
sections
 The “after” group made less errors in their attempt to get to
specific locations within the building
Spatial Memory Applications
Improved Building Design
You-are-here maps can be helpful; but sometimes
are not
Careful placement and alignment is necessary
Judging direction from these maps is faster and more
accurate if the user is facing the same direction as
the map
Credits
Some slides prepared with the help of the following websites:
 psych.fullerton.edu/navarick/behavcog.ppt
 www.psychology.uiowa.edu/classes/31123/Chap14.ppt
 faculty.unlv.edu/debelle/biol475/lect24-07S.ppt
 digby.tamu.edu/406/class.../Practice%20and%20Expertise.ppt
 digby.tamu.edu/classes/406/ch10.ppt
 users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/martina.ppt
 www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/.../...