A Dissociative Framework for Understanding Same-Different Conceptualization.

Cognitive, comparative, and developmental psychologists have long been interested in humans' and animals' ability to respond to abstract relations. Cross-species research has used relational matching-to-sample (RMTS) tasks in which participants try to find stimulus pairs that "match" because they express the same abstract relation (same or different). Researchers seek to understand the cognitive processes that underlie successful matching, and the cognitive constraints that create species differences in these tasks.

Exploring Explicit Learning Strategies: A Dissociative Framework for Research.

To explain learning, comparative researchers invoke an associative construct by which immediate reinforcement strengthens animal's adaptive responses. In contrast, cognitive researchers freely acknowledge humans' explicit-learning capability to test and confirm hypotheses even lacking direct reinforcement. We describe a new dissociative framework that may stretch animals' learning toward the explicit pole of cognition.

Conceptual anchoring dissociates implicit and explicit category learning.

Categorization researchers have long debated the possibility of multiple category-learning systems. The need persists for paradigms that dissociate explicit-declarative category-learning processes (featuring verbalizable category rules) from implicit-procedural processes (featuring stimulus-response associations lying beneath declarative cognition). The authors contribute a new paradigm, using perfectly matched exclusive-or (XOR) category tasks differing only in the availability or absence of easily verbalizable conceptual content.

Launch! Self-agency as a discriminative cue for humans (Homo sapiens) and monkeys (Macaca Mulatta).

Self-agency is a crucial aspect of self-awareness. It is underresearched given the phenomenon's subjectivity and difficulty of study. It is particularly underresearched comparatively, given that animals cannot receive agency instructions or make agency declarations.

The Cognitive Architecture of Uncertainty.

The authors consider theory in the animal-metacognition literature. Theoretical interpretation was long dominated by associative descriptions, as illustrated in the 2009 special issue. We suggest that this approach risks a self-limiting understanding of animal mind, and an imprecise understanding of the cognitive requirements inherent in metacognition tasks.

Perceptual category learning in autism spectrum disorder: Truth and consequences.

The ability to categorize is fundamental to cognitive development. Some categories emerge effortlessly and rapidly while others can take years of experience to acquire. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often able to name and sort objects, suggesting that their categorization abilities are largely intact.

Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) learn two-choice discriminations under displaced reinforcement.

To explain animal learning, researchers invoke a dominant associative construct. In contrast, researchers freely acknowledge humans' explicit-declarative learning capacity. Here, we stretched animals' learning performance toward the explicit pole of cognition.

Easy-to-hard effects in perceptual learning depend upon the degree to which initial trials are "easy".

Starting perceptual training at easy levels before progressing to difficult levels generally produces better learning outcomes than constantly difficult training does. However, little is known about how "easy" these initial levels should be in order to yield easy-to-hard effects. We compared five levels of initial training block difficulty varying from very easy to hard in two auditory-discrimination learning tasks-a frequency modulation rate discrimination (Experiment 1) and a frequency range discrimination (Experiment 2).

Simultaneous versus prospective/retrospective uncertainty monitoring: The effect of response competition across cognitive levels.

Early animal-metacognition researchers singled out simultaneous metacognition paradigms for theoretical criticism, because these paradigms presented concretely rewarded perceptual responses and the metacognitive response simultaneously. This method potentially introduced associative cues into the situation that could confound the interpretation of the metacognitive response. Evaluating this possibility, we compared humans' metacognitive performances in simultaneous and nonsimultaneous (prospective, retrospective) paradigms that were otherwise identical.

Breaking the perceptual-conceptual barrier: Relational matching and working memory.

Cognitive, comparative, and developmental psychologists have long been interested in humans' and animals' ability to respond to abstract relations, as this ability may underlie important capacities like analogical reasoning. Cross-species research has used relational matching-to-sample (RMTS) tasks in which participants try to find stimulus pairs that "match" because they both express the same abstract relation (same or different). Researchers seek to understand the cognitive processes that underlie successful matching performance.

I scan, therefore I decline: The time course of difficulty monitoring in humans (homo sapiens) and macaques (macaca mulatta).

The study of nonhumans' metacognitive judgments about trial difficulty has grown into an important comparative literature. However, the potential for associative-learning confounds in this area has left room for behaviorist interpretations that are strongly asserted and hotly debated. This article considers how researchers may be able to observe animals' strategic cognitive processes more clearly by creating temporally extended problems within which associative cues are not always immediately available.

The transfer of category knowledge by macaques (Macaca mulatta) and humans (Homo sapiens).

Cognitive psychologists distinguish implicit, procedural category learning (stimulus-response associations learned outside declarative cognition) from explicit-declarative category learning (conscious category rules). These systems are dissociated by category learning tasks with either a multidimensional, information-integration (II) solution or a unidimensional, rule-based (RB) solution. In the present experiments, humans and two monkeys learned II and RB category tasks fostering implicit and explicit learning, respectively.

One-back reinforcement dissociates implicit-procedural and explicit-declarative category learning.

The debate over unitary/multiple category-learning utilities is reminiscent of debates about multiple memory systems and unitary/dual codes in knowledge representation. In categorization, researchers continue to seek paradigms to dissociate explicit learning processes (yielding verbalizable rules) from implicit learning processes (yielding stimulus-response associations that remain outside awareness). We introduce a new dissociation here.

Dissociable learning processes in comparative psychology.

Comparative and cognitive psychologists interpret performance in different ways. Animal researchers invoke a dominant construct of associative learning. Human researchers acknowledge humans' capacity for explicit-declarative cognition.

Benefits of fading in perceptual learning are driven by more than dimensional attention.

Individuals learn to classify percepts effectively when the task is initially easy and then gradually increases in difficulty. Some suggest that this is because easy-to-discriminate events help learners focus attention on discrimination-relevant dimensions. Here, we tested whether such attentional-spotlighting accounts are sufficient to explain easy-to-hard effects in auditory perceptual learning.

Categorization: The View from Animal Cognition.

Exemplar, prototype, and rule theory have organized much of the enormous literature on categorization. From this theoretical foundation have arisen the two primary debates in the literature-the prototype-exemplar debate and the single system-multiple systems debate. We review these theories and debates.

Brief Report: Simulations Suggest Heterogeneous Category Learning and Generalization in Children with Autism is a Result of Idiosyncratic Perceptual Transformations.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) sometimes have difficulties learning categories. Past computational work suggests that such deficits may result from atypical representations in cortical maps. Here we use neural networks to show that idiosyncratic transformations of inputs can result in the formation of feature maps that impair category learning for some inputs, but not for other closely related inputs.

Formal models in animal-metacognition research: the problem of interpreting animals' behavior.

Ongoing research explores whether animals have precursors to metacognition-that is, the capacity to monitor mental states or cognitive processes. Comparative psychologists have tested apes, monkeys, rats, pigeons, and a dolphin using perceptual, memory, foraging, and information-seeking paradigms. The consensus is that some species have a functional analog to human metacognition.

Capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) modulate their use of an uncertainty response depending on risk.

Metacognition refers to thinking about thinking, and there has been a great deal of interest in how this ability manifests across primates. Based on much of the work to date, a tentative division has been drawn with New World monkeys on 1 side and Old World monkeys and apes on the other. Specifically, Old World monkeys, apes, and humans often show patterns reflecting metacognition, but New World monkeys typically do not, or show less convincing behavioral patterns.

Generalization of category knowledge and dimensional categorization in humans (Homo sapiens) and nonhuman primates (Macaca mulatta).

A theoretical framework within neuroscience distinguishes humans' implicit and explicit systems for category learning. We used a perceptual-categorization paradigm to ask whether nonhumans share elements of these systems. Participants learned categories that foster implicit or explicit categorization in humans, because they had a multidimensional, information-integration (II) solution or a unidimensional, rule-based (RB) solution.

Heterogeneity in perceptual category learning by high functioning children with autism spectrum disorder.

Previous research suggests that high functioning (HF) children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) sometimes have problems learning categories, but often appear to perform normally in categorization tasks. The deficits that individuals with ASD show when learning categories have been attributed to executive dysfunction, general deficits in implicit learning, atypical cognitive strategies, or abnormal perceptual biases and abilities. Several of these psychological explanations for category learning deficits have been associated with neural abnormalities such as cortical underconnectivity.

The time course of explicit and implicit categorization.

Contemporary theory in cognitive neuroscience distinguishes, among the processes and utilities that serve categorization, explicit and implicit systems of category learning that learn, respectively, category rules by active hypothesis testing or adaptive behaviors by association and reinforcement. Little is known about the time course of categorization within these systems. Accordingly, the present experiments contrasted tasks that fostered explicit categorization (because they had a one-dimensional, rule-based solution) or implicit categorization (because they had a two-dimensional, information-integration solution).

The interplay between uncertainty monitoring and working memory: Can metacognition become automatic?

The uncertainty response has grounded the study of metacognition in nonhuman animals. Recent research has explored the processes supporting uncertainty monitoring in monkeys. It has revealed that uncertainty responding, in contrast to perceptual responding, depends on significant working memory resources.

Learning, plasticity, and atypical generalization in children with autism.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show accelerated learning in some tasks, degraded learning in others, and distinct deficits when generalizing to novel situations. Recent simulations with connectionist models suggest that deficits in cortical plasticity mechanisms can account for atypical patterns of generalization shown by some children with ASD. We tested the surprising theoretical prediction, from past simulations, that the children with ASD who show atypical generalization in perceptual categorization tasks will benefit more from training with a single prototypical member of the category than from training with multiple examples, but children with ASD who generalize normally will be comparatively harmed.