Biomedical subjects

Serge V Onyper

Publications and source records attributed to Serge V Onyper.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

The associative-memory basis of cognitive skill learning: adult age differences.

It has been established that memorizing common problems and their solutions underlies cognitive skill development, and that there are substantial age deficits in the rate of this learning. In a between-groups design, the authors compared learning rates for the same set of problems in skill (SK) training and paired-associate (PA) training. The authors found main effects due to condition (PA problems were acquired earlier) and to age (older adults' learning was delayed), but no condition-by-age interaction. The authors concluded that the age deficit in SK can be accounted for by the age deficit in associative memory; no further explanation is needed. The authors also analyzed fast and slow retrieves in SK and PA, and found that the frequency of fast retrieves did not differ in the two conditions. The overall advantage of PA was due to the occurrence of slow retrieves, which were absent in SK presumably because the skill algorithm displaces slow, explicit memory search in SK, but not fast, familiarity-based retrieval.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Determinants of retrieval solutions during cognitive skill training: source confusions.

Diverse outcomes, both facilitative and disruptive, have been reported for the effect of interpolated item recognition tests on the acquisition of a cognitive skill. We collected data from a repeated set of 12 artificial arithmetic problems, soliciting compute/retrieve strategy reports after every trial. In one condition, a recognition test was administered after every three blocks of training. Recognition testing was found to depress retrieve frequencies in both younger and older adults, particularly for newly acquired items. Pairing training items with similar recognition foils mitigated these effects. This pattern of results could be explained by assuming that the participants based compute/retrieve decisions on item familiarity or frequency, tracked across both skill trials and recognition trials, and on a threshold influenced by source confusion. Variations in the threshold parameter could lead to depressed reports of item retrieval (our findings) or to elevated retrieval decisions, as has been shown in some other studies.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Item learning in cognitive skill training: effects of item difficulty.

Item difficulty effects in skill learning were examined by giving participants extensive training with repeated alphabet arithmetic problems that varied in addend size (e.g., C-D = ? is easy; C-J = ? is harder). Recognition memory for the items, as measured by interpolated recognition tests, was acquired early in training and was unaffected by item difficulty. Memory for the solutions to items, as measured by the participants' strategy reports that they had retrieved, rather than computed, the solution, was acquired later and was affected by item difficulty. Solutions to easier items were learned earlier in training for both young adults (18-24 years) and older adults (60-75 years), superimposed on an overall lower level of solution learning in older participants. The results suggest that the formation of associations between problems and their solutions is effortful and shares limited processing resources with the computational demands of the problem.

Adolescent↗