Relational learning with and without awareness: Transitive inference using nonverbal stimuli in humans

Greene, Anthony J.; Spellman, Barbara A.; Dusek, Jeffery A.; Eichenbaum, Howard; Levy, William B.

doi:10.3758/bf03196418

Cited by 86 publications

(144 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…The participants in their studies had consciously encoded suprathreshold premise pairs. The participants' performance at test indicated successful inference even if they reported to be unaware of the rules that governed their decisions (Greene et al, 2001(Greene et al, , 2006Leo and Greene, 2008). The current findings underscore these results and extend them by showing that awareness is not even required for the encoding of premise pairs.…”

Section: Retrieval (A-c ͼ A-d) Noactivationssupporting

confidence: 73%

“…The first evidence that true inference may proceed unconsciously was provided by Greene and colleagues (Greene et al, 2001(Greene et al, , 2006Leo and Greene, 2008). The participants in their studies had consciously encoded suprathreshold premise pairs.…”

Section: Retrieval (A-c ͼ A-d) Noactivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The current findings underscore these results and extend them by showing that awareness is not even required for the encoding of premise pairs. Greene and colleagues (Greene et al, 2001(Greene et al, , 2006Leo and Greene, 2008), as well as other investigators of unconscious inference (Smith and Squire, 2005;Libben and Titone, 2008;Moses et al, 2010), presented the encoding and test material suprathreshold, i.e., for conscious inspection. Awareness of the interrelatedness between encoding items was assessed following the experiment using a questionnaire.…”

Section: Retrieval (A-c ͼ A-d) Noactivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unconscious Relational Inference Recruits the Hippocampus

Reber¹,

Luechinger²,

Boesiger³

et al. 2012

J. Neurosci.

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Relational inference denotes the capacity to encode, flexibly retrieve, and integrate multiple memories to combine past experiences to update knowledge and improve decision-making in new situations. Although relational inference is thought to depend on the hippocampus and consciousness, we now show in young, healthy men that it may occur outside consciousness but still recruits the hippocampus. In temporally distinct and unique subliminal episodes, we presented word pairs that either overlapped ("winter-red", "red-computer") or not. Effects of unconscious relational inference emerged in reaction times recorded during unconscious encoding and in the outcome of decisions made 1 min later at test, when participants judged the semantic relatedness of two supraliminal words. These words were either episodically related through a common word ("winter-computer" related through "red") or unrelated. Hippocampal activity increased during the unconscious encoding of overlapping versus nonoverlapping word pairs and during the unconscious retrieval of episodically related versus unrelated words. Furthermore, hippocampal activity during unconscious encoding predicted the outcome of decisions made at test. Hence, unconscious inference may influence decision-making in new situations.

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Section: Retrieval (A-c ͼ A-d) Noactivationssupporting

confidence: 73%

Section: Retrieval (A-c ͼ A-d) Noactivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Retrieval (A-c ͼ A-d) Noactivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unconscious Relational Inference Recruits the Hippocampus

Reber¹,

Luechinger²,

Boesiger³

et al. 2012

J. Neurosci.

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“…In this study, we examine schema-based effects in the context of the transitive inference (TI) paradigm-an experimental scenario which provides a well-controlled setting in which to examine the influence of an associative schema (i.e., prior knowledge of the rank position of items in the hierarchy) on the learning of new information (i.e., relating to the rank position of novel items). To the best of our knowledge, however, the TI paradigm has not been employed with this purpose in mind, though it has been widely used across species to study the mechanisms that support inferential behavior and generalization, and in particular the specific contribution of the hippocampus (Bryant and Trabasso 1971; Chalmers 1977, 1992;Harris and McGonigle 1994;Rapp et al 1996;Dusek and Eichenbaum 1997;Delius and Siemann 1998;Greene et al 2001;Frank et al 2003Frank et al , 2005Heckers et al 2004;Titone et al 2004;Smith and Squire 2005;Moses and Ryan 2006;Moses et al 2010;Zeithamova et al 2012).In this three-phase study involving 30 participants, we used a version of the TI paradigm, which follows the lines of the original paradigm developed by Bryant and Trabasso (1971), and has been shown to ensure the development of robust transitivity performance across a group of participants, underpinned by relational knowledge of the hierarchy (see Materials and Methods) (Cohen and Eichenbaum 1993;Eichenbaum 2004;Smith and Squire 2005;. Our experimental design ( Fig.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Schema-driven facilitation of new hierarchy learning in the transitive inference paradigm

Kumaran

2013

Learn. Mem.

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Prior knowledge, in the form of a mental schema or framework, is viewed to facilitate the learning of new information in a range of experimental and everyday scenarios. Despite rising interest in the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying schema-driven facilitation of new learning, few paradigms have been developed to examine this issue in humans. Here we develop a multiphase experimental scenario aimed at characterizing schema-based effects in the context of a paradigm that has been very widely used across species, the transitive inference task. We show that an associative schema, comprised of prior knowledge of the rank positions of familiar items in the hierarchy, has a marked effect on transitivity performance and the development of relational knowledge of the hierarchy that cannot be accounted for by more general changes in task strategy. Further, we show that participants are capable of deploying prior knowledge to successful effect under surprising conditions (i.e., when corrective feedback is totally absent), but only when the associative schema is robust. Finally, our results provide insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying such schema-driven effects, and suggest that new hierarchy learning in the transitive inference task can occur through a contextual transfer mechanism that exploits the structure of associative experiences.Prior knowledge, in the form of a mental schema or framework of associative information, is thought to facilitate the learning of new information in a range of experimental and everyday scenarios (Bartlett 1932;Brandsford 1979;McClelland et al. 1995;Maguire et al. 1999;Tse et al. 2007;Kumaran et al. 2009;van Kesteren et al. 2010a van Kesteren et al. ,b, 2012Tse et al. 2011). In recent years, there has been increasing interest in specific neural mechanisms that underlie this process (Tse et al. 2007;Kumaran et al. 2009;van Kesteren et al. 2010a van Kesteren et al. ,b, 2012Tse et al. 2011). For example, an influential study in rodents found that the learning of new associations (i.e., a new flavor-place paired associate) was markedly enhanced in the presence of an associative schema consisting of previously acquired flavor -place associations, experienced in a similar context (i.e., the same event arena) (Tse et al. 2007). Strikingly, this speeded (i.e., one-trial) associative learning became rapidly hippocampal-independent, providing evidence for a schemadriven shift in the neural mechanisms underlying the learning of new information.Despite the surge of interest in the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying the facilitatory effects of an associative schema on new learning, there is a paucity of experimental paradigms specifically designed to address this question in humans. In this study, we examine schema-based effects in the context of the transitive inference (TI) paradigm-an experimental scenario which provides a well-controlled setting in which to examine the influence of an associative schema (i.e., prior knowledge of the rank position of items in the hiera...

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“…humans can learn complex tasks without explicitly understanding them and further 2. humans who do gain an explicit understanding show no performance difference from those who do not (Siemann and Delius, 1993;Bechara et al, 1995;Greene et al, 2001). …”

Section: Deliberationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modular Representations of Cognitive Phenomena in AI, Psychology and Neuroscience

Bryson

Visions of Mind

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Many architectures of mind assume some form of modularity, but what is meant by the term ‘module’? This chapter creates a framework for understanding current modularity research in three subdisciplines of cognitive science: psychology, artificial intelligence (AI), and neuroscience. This framework starts from the distinction between horizontal modules that support all expressed behaviors vs. vertical modules that support individual domain-specific capacities. The framework is used to discuss innateness, automaticity, compositionality, representations, massive modularity, behavior-based and multi-agent AI systems, and correspondence to physiological neurosystems. There is also a brief discussion of the relevance of modularity to conscious experience.

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Relational learning with and without awareness: Transitive inference using nonverbal stimuli in humans

Cited by 86 publications

References 54 publications

Unconscious Relational Inference Recruits the Hippocampus

Unconscious Relational Inference Recruits the Hippocampus

Schema-driven facilitation of new hierarchy learning in the transitive inference paradigm

Modular Representations of Cognitive Phenomena in AI, Psychology and Neuroscience

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