Abstract: 1. How Does a Brain Build a Cognitive Code?.- 2. Some Physiological and Biochemical Consequences of Psychological Postulates.- 3. Classical and Instrumental Learning by Neural Networks.- 4. Pattern Learning by Functional-Differential Neural Networks with Arbitrary Path Weights.- 5. A Neural Theory of Punishment and Avoidance. II: Quantitative Theory.- 6. A Neural Model of Attention, Reinforcement and Discrimination Learning.- 7. Neural Expectation: Cerebellar and Retinal Analogs of Cells Fired by Learnable or Unlearned Pattern Classes.- 8. Contour Enhancement, Short Term Memory, and Constancies in Reverberating Neural Networks.- 9. Biological Competition: Decision Rules, Pattern Formation, and Oscillations.- 10. Competition, Decision, and Consensus.- 11. Behavioral Contrast in Short Term Memory: Serial Binary Memory Models or Parallel Continuous Memory Models?.- 12. Adaptive Pattern Classification and Universal Recoding. I: Parallel Development and Coding of Neural Feature Detectors.- 13. A Theory of Human Memory: Self-Organization and Performance of Sensory-Motor Codes, Maps, and Plans.- List of Publications.

Abstract: Some recent formal models of Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning contain internal paradoxes that restrict their predictive power. These paradoxes can be traced to an inadequate formulation of how mechanisms of short-term memory and long-term memory work together to control the shifting balance between the processing of expected and unexpected events. Once this formulation is strengthened, a unified processing framework is suggested wherein attentional and orienting subsystems coexist in a complementary relationship that controls the adaptive self-organization of internal representations in response to expected and unexpected events. In this framework, conditioning and attentional constructs can be more directly validated by interdisciplinary paradigms in which seemingly disparate phenomena can be shown to share similar physiological and pharmacological mechanisms. A model of cholinergic-catecholaminergic interactions suggests how drive, reinforcer, and arousal inputs regulate motivational baseline, hysteresis, and rebound, with the hippocampus as a final common path. Extinction, conditioned emotional responses, conditioned avoidance responses, secondary conditioning, and inverted U effects also occur. A similar design in sensory and cognitive representations suggests how short-term memory reset and attentional resonance occur and are related to evoked potentials such as N200, P300, and contingent negative variation (CNV). Competitive feedback properties such as pattern matching, contrast enhancement, and normalization of short-term memory patterns make possible the hypothesis testing procedures that search for arid define new internal representations in response to unexpected events. Longterm memory traces regulate adaptive filtering, expectancy learning, conditioned reinforcer learning, incentive motivational learning, and habit learning. When these mechanisms act together, conditioning phenomena such as overshadowing, unblocking, latent inhibition, overexpectation, and behavioral contrast emerge. Internal Problems of Some Mackintosh (1971), Rescorla and Wagner

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of the research on individual differences in short-term memory (STM) capacity as related to general intellectual capacity (IQ) and reading ability. It highlights the individual differences in STM as related to IQ and reading ability and discusses the processes underlying these differences. There are enough studies that use both types of tasks, STM and serial STM (SSTM) with the same subjects to suggest that the confounding of task and subject type are not a serious threat to the preceding argument. Individual differences in STM tasks other than SSTM may well be dependent on corresponding differences in strategy efficiency, whether these individual differences are related to reading skill, age, or IQ. IQ and reading ability, which affect primacy performance in nonserial tasks, do not appear to affect performance on primacy items in SSTM tasks but by the results of the memory training study. Whereas some progress has been made toward identifying critical processes in nonserial STM, the critical processes in SSTM are still obscure.

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the retention of item and order information that draws on the same processing capacity A negative answer is provided for both temporal sequence and spatial location information Four experiments are conducted Experiment 1 result's indicates that the amount of to-be-remembered does not influence the retention of temporal sequence information, and experiment 2 result's suggests that the coding strategy used to retain spatial location information is not affected by the amount of associated item information Experiments 3 and 4 provide further indications that spatial location retention is not affected by the quality of the to-be-remembered items, because there are no consistent effects in these experiments of either the phonemic or the visual characteristics of the items The chapter discusses why subjects use different coding strategies for the retention of temporal sequence and spatial location information The present findings in the chapter have implications for a much broader issue in cognitive psychology concerning the representation of information in memory

Abstract: Memory for narrative materials in learning disabled adults was assessed using stories constructed according to Mandler and Johnson's (1977) story grammar. Experiment I showed that LD adults and normal third graders recalled significantly less than university adults; sixth graders and community college adults were intermediate. The pattern of recall of story nodes, however, did not suggest a structural-organizational deficit in long-term memory, and there were no qualitative differences between the LD group and other groups. In experiment II a repetition group read the stimulus stories three trials successively. A construction group received a brief explanation of the story grammar after which subjects actively constructed the stimulus stories. Contrary to expectations, training in structural analysis did not strengthen the links among individual story elements; the construction group performed as poorly as a standard single-presentation group. Simple repetition, on the other hand, was extremely effective ...

Abstract: Thirty-two subjects participated in three experiments, one assessing auditory short-term memory for word lists with and without a verbal suffix and two assessing discrimination of synthetic vowels at either short or long interstimulus delays. The purpose was to find out whether the same kind of auditory memory supports both short-term memory and speech discrimination. There was a significant correlation between performance in the suffix and A-X speech-discrimination experiments in those conditions likely to depend partly on echoic memory; however, there was no significant correlation between the tasks in conditions in which echoic memory was presumed to have been removed. The results provide a bridge between perception and memory procedures and support a theoretical model that was made to cover both domains.

Abstract: To assess the contributions of two types of short-term memory (STM)-passive span of apprehension and working memory-to the intellectual, (that is, fluid [Gf] and crystallized [Gc]) functioning of adults and age differences therein, data from a test battery assessing STM, Gf, and Gc administered to three (n = 54) groups of adults, aged 17-26, 39-51, and 59-76 years (N = 162), were analyzed. Measures of STM and Gf showed substantial and significant negative relationships with age, while the Gc-age relations were significantly positive, but weak. Age declines in Gf functioning appear related to working STM (as measured by backward digits) deficits but not to passive STM (as measured by forward digits) deficits. In contrast to previous literature suggesting that memory span tasks have little utility as measures of STM deficits among the aged, these results suggest great utility if the forward versus backward memory span distinction is maintained.

Abstract: Summary College students (n = 36) and elderly persons (n = 28 females, eight males; 60–83 years old) were compared on an immediate-memory task involving an outstanding item in the center of the array. The college students remembered the outstanding item well, the elderly did not. Both groups displayed better overall performance for the list containing the outstanding item. The results are discussed in terms of differences in processing strategies.

Abstract: Pre-existing preference for stimulus modality is often claimed to control performance on short-term memory tasks. The present experiment evaluated the effects of reinforcement contingencies on task performance of bisensory missing words. Subjects included one learning disabled (LD) male with an auditory preference and one LD female with a visual preference on short-term memory tasks that presented both visual and auditory stimuli. Reinforcement contingencies were found to control both subjects' performances. Results imply that reinforcement variables may account for consistency in a subject's visual or auditory stimulus-controlled performance.

Abstract: Adapted the Coding subtest of the WISC-R to provide a measure of visual memory. Three hundred and five children, aged 8 through 12, were administered the Coding test using standard directions. A few seconds after completion the key was taken away, and each was given a paper with only the digits and asked to write the appropriate matching symbol below each. This was termed "Coding Recall." To provide validity data, a subgroup of 50 Ss also was administered the Attention Span for Letters subtest from the Detroit Tests of Learning Aptitude (as a test of visual memory for sequences of letters) and a Bender Gestalt recall test (as a measure of visual memory for geometric forms). Coding Recall means and standard deviations are reported separately by sex and age level. Implications for clinicans are discussed. Reservations about clinical use of the data are given in view of the possible lack of representativeness of the sample used and the limited reliability and validity of Coding Recall.

Abstract: The present study investigated the hypothesis that nonstrategic verbal encoding abilities are deficient in learning disabled readers. Normal, deaf, and learning disabled children matched on chronological age, IQ, and sex were randomly assigned to named and unnamed stimulus pretraining conditions and compared on subsequent performance on a probe-type serial memory task. Although overt rehearsal was inhibited, strong primacy effects were found for both the named and the unnamed condition. The named condition was superior to the unnamed condition for both normal and deaf but not for learning disabled children. Results were interpreted to indicate a deficient verbal-visual integrative process in disabled children occurring prior to the application of mnemonic strategies. To what extent is short-term memory of visual stimuli dependent upon verbal processes in learning disabled and normal readers? This basic question has generated extensive research on the mnemonic strategies used by learning disabled and nondisabled children. The results suggest that normal children are superior in serial recall tasks which presumably require rehearsal and other mnemonic processes (e.g., Hagen, Meacham, & Mesibov, 1970; Tarver, Hallahan, Kauffman, & Ball, 1976). However, efforts to fully understand processing of visual materials have been hampered by nonstrategic factors, such as differences in verbal-visual integrative abilities in learning disabled and nondisabled subjects (cf. Vellutino, 1977; Vellutino, Steger, DeSetto, & Phillips, 1975). Swanson (1978) found that pretraining in naming unfamiliar visual stimuli resulted in similar acquisition of names by disabled and normal readers. However, disabled children's subsequent recall performance was inferior to that of normal readers, suggesting that the disabled did not use the previously acquired labels to mediate recall. These results indicate that encoding processes, such as verbal-visual integration, may be important for recall differences in normal and disabled

Abstract: The recall spans for verbal and visual information were represented, respectively, in terms of the number of digits and the number of dots in a 5×5 matrix They were measured independently by the method of limits as functions of presentation times which ranged from 1 ms to 64 s The curves were very similar: each had two plateaus, one at 10 to 100 ms and one at 2 to 8 s presentation levels These plateaus suggest two kinds of capacity limitation on information processing The first limitation is concerned with the transfer of information from iconic memory to short-term memory (STM); the second indicates the saturation of the limited capacity short-term store Short-term and long-term mechanisms are involved not only in verbal memory but also in visual memory, since the second plateau followed by an increasing portion appears in the visual span curve as well as in the verbal one Finally, the distinction between verbal and visual STM is discussed, based on a) the selective interference effects of distracting tasks upon the retention of verbal and visual materials, and b) the weak correlation between verbal and visual spans

Abstract: 40 subjects were required to memorize different word lists. Each list contained three words, and each list corresponded to one trial. The Brown-Peterson paradigm was employed to induce proactive memory interference. For the experimental group the first three lists belonged to a negative affective encoding category, while the fourth belonged to a different encoding category. The control subjects memorized words from mixed encoding categories. In the experimental group proactive interference built up over trials with the same encoding category of words, resulting in a poorer performance at recall, during the second and third trials, and progressive decrease in heart rate. On the fourth trial of the Brown-Peterson task, proactive interference ceased, resulting in better recall than the previous interference trials, concomitantly with an increase in heart rate. These results are discussed within the context of Lacey's hypothesis, according to which, heart rate should increase with cognitive activity requiring rejection of environmental stimuli.

Abstract: Two hypotheses concerning the way in which short-term memory interacts with another task in a dual task situation are considered. It is noted that when two tasks are combined, the activity of controlling and organizing performance on both tasks simultaneously may compete with either task for a resource; this resource may be space in a central mechanism or general processing capacity or it may be some task-specific resource. If a special relationship exists between short-term memory and control, especially if there is an identity relationship between short-term and a central controlling mechanism, then short-term memory performance should show a decrement in a dual task situation. Even if short-term memory does not have any particular identity with a controlling mechanism, but both tasks draw on some common resource or resources, then a tradeoff between the two tasks in allocating resources is possible and could be reflected in performance. The persistent concurrence cost in memory performance in these experiments suggests that short-term memory may have a unique status in the information processing system.