A Developmental Perspective on Order and Learning: Temporal Effects on Cued Attention

A Developmental Perspective on Order and Learning: Temporal Effects on Cued Attention Joseph Burling (jmburling@uh.edu) Department of Psychology, University of Houston, 126 Heyne Building Houston, TX 77204-5022 USA Hanako Yoshida (yoshida@uh.edu) Department of Psychology, University of Houston, 126 Heyne Building Houston, TX 77204-5022 USA Abstract behavioral peculiarities. Medin & Edelson’s (1988) original work placed considerable weight on base-rate knowledge, such as sensitivity to the frequency of presented cues. Over the course of experimentation on the issue, other influences have been shown to be of particular importance. One underlying factor that has been previously ignored—a factor that is integrated not only in base-rate information, but throughout all types of learning—is the order in which information is presented. The two experiments in this paper provide evidence for order effects obtained from adult and child populations. Experiment 1 compares different versions of base-rate and canonical highlighting tasks investigating the differences between visual processing of cues and inference based knowledge. Comparisons based on adults’ individual performance are also addressed. Experiment 2 implements designs from Experiment 1 to investigate the nature of order effects on children ages 4-5-years-old. Keywords: order effect; temporal factors; learning asymmetry; inverse base-rate; highlighting; selective attention; cue competition Temporal Factors Asymmetrical Learning There are an infinite number of complexities involved when trying to provide explanations and descriptions of human learning ability; however, this adversity does not prevent experimenters from trying to search for answers. This ambitious problem has been confronted from many different perspectives, but one approach among many that provides a small glimpse into how humans acquire knowledge over time is to investigate behavioral anomalies that seem to contradict statistical expectation. Specifically, observing abnormal response patterns during decision making tasks may supply some answers that explain the processes involved in category formation. The types of asymmetrical response patterns—responses that deviate from expectation—have been observed in a specific phenomenon known as the inverse base-rate effect (Medin & Edelson, 1988), or alternatively referred to as the highlighting effect due to the prominent role of rapid attentional shifts (Kruschke, 2003). These response biases seen in tasks involving the inverse base-rate effect are considerably robust across many different iterations of the experimental structure. Alterations in the proportion of objects pairs presented during training have shown consistent results in decision making patterns, in addition to dual-task implementations or time restrictions placed on outcome choice (Lamberts & Kent, 2007; Medin & Bettger, 1991; Shanks, 1992). Given the degree of stability across the different iterations, the validity of observed response biases is not under scrutiny; the existence of such response asymmetry is widely accepted. However, much contention is derived from the explanations provided to account for the Order effects manipulating categorical representations can be accounted for by different models of explanation. These models propose different cognitive influences and may be divided based on their emphasis on either top-down or bottom-up processes. The proposed mechanisms based on higher-level inferences can take the form of explicit strategies implemented during a cost-benefit analysis (Medin et al, 1988), or rule-based processing, in which less familiar categories are actively eliminated as possible candidates during ambiguous forced-choice tasks (Juslin, Wennerholm, & Winman, 2001). An alternative viewpoint is that the patterns emerging over time that influence decision making are the result of shifts in attention away from erroneous cues inherent in the training structure, resulting in unequally weighted representations across different cue combinations (Kruschke, 1996). Common to both paradigms is the reliance on certain sets of cues to be learned before later cue combinations; however, frequency theories place little importance on this factor. We believe that the order in which cues are presented is critical. In addition to the proposed mechanisms suspected of leading to variability in object representations, the nature of observing a subset of elements before others determines the fate of future learning for upcoming elements, which may contain some overlap in composition between time slices. The gradation of current knowledge sets the path for the identity and make-up of future knowledge. Taking the opposite perspective on temporality, prior experience and perceptual history accumulates in the form of stored memories. Not only does current knowledge matter in the way it affects future knowledge, one must also consider the current state of knowledge derived from one’s entire history of learning. Invoking the necessary tools from the cognitive