This paper presents an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) for the learning of arithmetical problem solving. This is based on an analysis of (a) the cognitive processes that take place during problem solving; and (b) the usual tasks performed by a human when supervising a student in a one-to-one tutoring situation. The ITS is able to identify the…

Reinforcement learning (RL) models of decision-making cannot account for human decisions in the absence of prior reward or punishment. We propose a mechanism for choosing among available options based on goal-option association strengths, where association strengths between objects represent previously experienced object proximity. The proposed…

We constructed a robust and low-priced finger pulse sensor from a singing greeting card beeper. The beeper outputs the plethysmographic signal, which is indistinguishable from that of commercial grade sensors. The sensor can be used in school for a number of experiments in human cardiovascular physiology.

The human body provides a wealth of information that, when captured and analyzed, offers deep insight into the mind and its processes. At no other point in history has this information been as accessible as it is today. Using various sensor systems, researchers can now efficiently capture fine-grain behavioral data and leverage it for scientific…

The current study examines 3- and 5-year-olds' representation of the concept we label "animal" and its two nested concepts--"animal"[subscript contrastive] (including only non-human animals) and "animal"[subscript inclusive] (including both humans and non-human animals). Building upon evidence that naming promotes object categorization, we…

Social learning has been shown to be an evolutionarily adaptive strategy, but it can be implemented via many different cognitive mechanisms. The adaptive advantage of social learning depends crucially on the ability of each learner to obtain relevant and accurate information from informants. The source of informants' knowledge is a particularly…

Learning in natural environments is often characterized by a degree of inconsistency from an input. These inconsistencies occur, for example, when learning from more than one source, or when the presence of environmental noise distorts incoming information; as a result, the task faced by the learner becomes ambiguous. In this study, we investigate…

Humans routinely make inferences about both the contents and the workings of other minds based on observed actions. People consider what others want or know, but also how intelligent, rational, or attentive they might be. Here, we introduce a new methodology for quantitatively studying the mechanisms people use to attribute intelligence to others…

In three experiments, human participants pressed the space bar on a computer keyboard to earn points on random-ratio (RR) and random-interval (RI) schedules of reinforcement. Verbalized contingency awareness (CA) for each schedule was measured after the entire task (Experiments 1 and 2), or after each RR-RI trial (Experiment 3). In all three…

Extinction is generally more fragile than conditioning, as illustrated by the contextual renewal effect. The traditional extinction procedure entails isolated presentations of the conditioned stimulus. Extinction may be boosted by adding isolated presentations of the unconditioned stimulus, as this should augment breaking the contingency between…

This study shows that in a novel task--bimanual haptic tracking--neurologically normal human adults can move their 2 hands independently for extended periods of time with little or no training. Participants lightly touched buttons whose positions were moved either quasi-randomly in the horizontal plane by 1 or 2 human drivers (Experiment 1), in…

Linguistic and non-linguistic pattern learning have been studied separately, but we argue for a comparative approach. Analogous inductive problems arise in phonological and visual pattern learning. Evidence from three experiments shows that human learners can solve them in analogous ways, and that human performance in both cases can be captured by…

In Experiment 1, human participants were pre-exposed to two similar checkerboard grids (AX and X) in alternation, and to a third grid (BX) in a separate block of trials. In a subsequent test, the unique feature A was better detected than the feature B when they were presented in the same location during the pre-exposure and test phases. However,…

Fear inhibition is markedly impaired in adolescent rodents and humans. The present experiments investigated whether this impairment is critically determined by the animal's age at the time of fear learning or their age at fear extinction. Male rats (n = 170) were tested for extinction retention after conditioning and extinction at different ages.…

A two-part experiment is presented that validates a new measurement tool for scoring oral reading ability. Data collected by the U.S. government in a large-scale literacy assessment of adults were analyzed by a system called VersaReader that uses automatic speech recognition and speech processing technologies to score oral reading fluency. In the…