Using objects as symbols: Associative learning improves when confusable items serve as cues rather than as associates

Do young children use objects as symbols?

Much of young children’s symbolic play is heavily scaffolded by adult symbolic action models, which children may imitate, and by adult verbal scripts. The current studies attempted to evaluate 18–35-month-old children’s symbolic skills in the absence of such scaffolding. In a study of symbol comprehension, children were tested for their ability to comprehend an adult’s use of either a replica o...

Quantization as Selection Rather than Eigenvalue Problem

Hippocampal c-Jun-N-terminal kinases serve as negative regulators of associative learning.

In the adult mouse, signaling through c-Jun N-terminal kinases (JNKs) links exposure to acute stress to various physiological responses. Inflammatory cytokines, brain injury and ischemic insult, or exposure to psychological acute stressors induce activation of hippocampal JNKs. Here we report that exposure to acute stress caused activation of JNKs in the hippocampal CA1 and CA3 subfields, and i...

Things to think with: words and objects as material symbols.

This paper integrates archaeology, anthropology and functional brain imaging in an examination of the cognition of words and objects. Based on a review of recent brain imaging experiments, it is argued that in cognition and action, material symbols may be the link between internal representations and objects and words in the world. This principle is applied to the sapient paradox, the slow deve...

Retrospective revaluation as simple associative learning.

Backward blocking, unovershadowing, and backward conditioned inhibition are examples of retrospective revaluation phenomena that have been suggested to involve more than simple associative learning. Models of these phenomena have thus used additional concepts, for example, appealing to attentional effects or more elaborate learning mechanisms. The author shows that a suitable representation of ...