Peter Hampson

Integration, elaboration and recollective experience

The relationship between integration and elaboration and consciousness in memory was investigated using the digit recall/distractor method of maintenance rehearsal. Subjects learned words either intentionally or incidentally while retaining three two-digit numbers. List items were rehearsed one, three, or six times. Subjects were given an immediate recognition test in which they were required to indicate, when recognising a word, whether or not their recognition was accompanied by conscious recollection of the item’s previous occurrence. Effects of intention to learn and number of rehearsals were found only for recognition accompanied by conscious recollection. The effect of rehearsals was found only for one to three, and not for three to six rehearsals. Further analysis indicated that the level of conscious recollection was a function of the amount of resources devoted to the rehearsal process, but no such relationship existed for recognition in the absence of conscious recollection. The results are taken as suggesting that consciousness in recollection is due to the retrieval of elaborated traces, while recognition in the absence of such consciousness is based on integrated traces.

A Transfer of Sequence Function Via Equivalence in A Connectionist Network

Connectionist networks may provide useful models of stimulus equivalence and transfer of function phenomena. Such models have been applied to a range of behavioral tasks and have demonstrated transfers of function via equivalence relations fallowing appropriate training, with networks accurately simulating the behavior of human subjects. In the current study, a connectionist network was pretrained on a series of equivalence and sequence tasks to simulate the preexperimental experience of an adult subject. It was then exposed to the equivalent of six conditional discriminations, and was tested for the formation of three 3-member equivalence classes (corresponding to A1-A2-A3, B1→B2→B3, C1-C2-C3). It was subsequently trained to produce a pair of four part sequences (corresponding to B1→B2→Ct1→B3 and B3 B2→Ct2→B1, where Ct1 and Ct2 represented contextual cues) before being tested for transfer, through equivalence, of the sequence responses to the C stimuli. Following appropriate pretraining, the network showed the formation of three equivalence classes and a transfer of sequence function to the nontrained C stimuli (producing the novel sequences C1→C2→Ct1→C3 and C3→C2→Ct2→C1). A control network, which was not exposed to conditional discrimination training, failed to demonstrate equivalence and the transfer of sequence function, as predicted by findings from experimental demonstrations with human participants. Network performance was analyzed as a function of amount of pretraining and a number of psychologically plausible training methods are presented. The data suggest that connectionist networks may provide accurate and plausible models of stimulus equivalence and transfer of function phenomena in natural language.

The Effect of Stimulus Meaningfulness on the Formation of Equivalence Classes

The current study investigated the effect of stimulus meaningfulness on the formation of equivalence classes in a conditional discrimination training task. Nonsense syllables rated as high or low in meaningfulness (m) on the Glaze (1928) and Krueger (1934) rating scales were presented in a matching-to-sample task. Thirteen participants were trained to produce B1 and C1 given the sample A1, B2 and C2 given A2, and B3 and C3 given A3. Participants’ performances during training and the emergence of a derived set of responses during testing (B1-C1, B2-C2, B3-C3) were analyzed as a function of m of stimuli within the relations. Training performances were predicted by m of the stimuli, with less error overall associated with low m configurations, and less error where sample and comparison items matched in terms of m (both high or both low).

Psychology and religion: Continuing an interrupted conversation

In the spirit of continuing an interrupted conversation with Liz Dunne, the current state of dialogue between psychology and religion is reviewed. Following a brief overview of the psychology of religion, the possibilities for mutually enriching and hospitable engagement between psychology and Christian theology are examined. Theology, with its longer history which initially incorporated psychology, is seen to involve a dual dynamic of ‘faith-seeking-understanding’ and ‘understanding-seeking-faith’. While psychology can usefully inform theology especially in its construction of theological anthropologies, theology is beginning, in turn, to qualify and position psychology in various ways. The full implications of these engagements have yet to be explored, but one is that the supposed value-free nature of psychology is immediately shown to be unattainable, another is that the reconstruction of the psychology of religion as a moral as well as biological, social, and cultural science is opened up. The paper c...