Dissociable learning processes, associative theory, and testimonial reviews: A comment on Smith and Church (2018)

Abstract

Smith and Church (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 1565-1584 2018) present a "testimonial" review of dissociable learning processes in comparative and cognitive psychology, by which we mean they include only the portion of the available evidence that is consistent with their conclusions. For example, they conclude that learning the information-integration category-learning task with immediate feedback is implicit, but do not consider the evidence that people readily report explicit strategies in this task, nor that this task can be accommodated by accounts that make no distinction between implicit and explicit processes. They also consider some of the neuroscience relating to information-integration category learning, but do not report those aspects that are more consistent with an explicit than an implicit account. They further conclude that delay conditioning in humans is implicit, but do not report evidence that delay conditioning requires awareness; nor do they present the evidence that conditioned taste aversion, which should be explicit under their account, can be implicit. We agree with Smith and Church that it is helpful to have a clear definition of associative theory, but suggest that their definition may be unnecessarily restrictive. We propose an alternative definition of associative theory and briefly describe an experimental procedure that we think may better distinguish between associative and non-associative processes.

A dimensional summation account of polymorphous category learning

“…For example, the conclusions of the Kemler Nelson, Smith, and Ward procedures cited above can be shown to be artifacts of their analysis technique (Wills et al 2015). A range of other results appearing to support overall similarity classification as a low effort classification mechanism (Filoteo et al 2010;Nomura et al 2007;Smith et al 2014;Spiering and Ashby 2008;Waldron and Ashby 2001;Zeithamova and Maddox 2006), also turn out to be flawed (Carpenter et al 2016;Edmunds et al 2018Edmunds et al , 2019Le Pelley et al 2019;Milton and Pothos 2011a;Newell et al , 2013Tharp and Pickering 2009;Wills et al 2019). In summary, the existing evidence is largely compatible with the idea that overall similarity classification is more effortful than single-dimension classification.…”

Valence generalization across nonrecurring structures.

“…Conceptualized as minimal informational units, organizing relations can be situationally redundant without positing truth criteria. By assuming organizing relations can be acquired independently of their terms, no assumptions are needed regarding the strengthening/weakening of unqualified mental links (Wills et al, 2019). These features render "organizing relations" conceptually distinct from propositional relations and mental associations (Spaulding, 1912).…”

Applying Insights on Categorisation, Communication, and Dynamic Decision-Making: A Case Study of a ‘Simple’ Maritime Military Decision

“…In a similar vein, there is no evidence that participants use different types of stimulus representation depending on the category structure (for partial reviews see Newell et al, 2011;Wills et al, 2019). Participants report using rule-based strategies in both simple and complex categorisation tasks (Edmunds et al, 2015(Edmunds et al, , 2019(Edmunds et al, , 2020.…”