Roles of context in acquisition of human instrumental learning: Implications for the understanding of the mechanisms underlying context-switch effects

Four experiments in human instrumental learning explored the associations involving the context that develop after three trials of training on simple discriminations. Experiments 1 and 4 found a deleterious effect of switching the learning context that cannot be explained by the context-outcome binary associations commonly used to explain context-switch effects after short training in human predictive learning and in animal Pavlovian conditioning. Evidence for context-outcome (Experiment 2), context-discriminative stimulus (Experiment 3), and context-instrumental response (Experiment 4) binary associations was found within the same training paradigm, suggesting that contexts became associated with all the elements of the situation, regardless of whether those associations played a role in a specific context-switch effect detected on performance.This research was funded by Grants PSI2010-15215 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and PSI2014-52263-C2-1-P from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Mechanisms of Contextual Control when Contexts are Informative to Solve the Task

An experiment was conducted using a human instrumental learning task with the goal of evaluating the mechanisms underlying the deleterious effect of context-switching on responding to an unambiguous stimulus when contexts are informative to solve the task. Participants were trained in a context-based reversal discrimination in which two discriminative stimuli (X and Y) interchange their meaning across contexts A and B. In context A, discriminative stimulus Z consistently announced that the relationship between a specific instrumental response (R1) and a specific outcome (O1) was in effect. Performance in the presence of stimulus Z was equally deteriorated when the test was conducted outside the training context, regardless of whether the test context was familiar (context B) or new (context C). This result is consistent with the idea that participants code all the information presented in an informative context as context-specific with the context playing a role akin to an occasion setter

The state of transfer of stimulus control after extinction in human instrumental conditioning: A key factor in therapy strategies based in nonhuman animal research

Link to data in OSF: https://osf.io/pbuxj/Previous research has shown that instrumental training can encourage the formation of binary associations between the representations of the elements present at the time of learning, that is, between the discriminative stimulus and the instrumental response (the S–R association), between the stimulus and outcome (the S–O association), and between the response and outcome (the R–O association). Studies with rats have used transfer procedures to explore the effects of discriminative extinction (i.e., extinction that is carried out in the presence of the discriminative stimuli) on these three binary associations. Thus, a reduction in the response rate of the extinguished response (R) can be detected in situations involving a different discriminative stimulus that was associated with the same outcome, and to unextinguished responses controlled by the discriminative stimulus (S) and associated with the outcome (O). These transfer effects suggest that R-O and S-O associations remain active after extinction in non-human animals. We carried out an experiment to explore these post-extinction transfer effects in humans using a within-subject design. Contrary to non-human reports, the S-O association was affected by discriminative extinction, suggesting differences in the associative structure of instrumental conditioning in human and nonhuman animals that should be considered by those therapeutic strategies based in nonhuman animal research aimed to reduce unhealthy instrumental behaviors in human beings.Research was made possible by Grants PGC2018-097769-B-C22 and RTI2018-096700-J-I00 from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities and European Regional Development Fund (FEDER)

Language proficiency and immigrants’ labor market outcomes in post-crisis Spain

This paper analyses the impact of Spanish proficiency on first generation immigrants’ labor market outcomes, based on the Labor Force Survey 2014 ad hoc module on the “Labor market situation of migrants and their immediate descendants”. A very high level of proficiency in Spanish is found to enhance immigrants’ employability, particularly for non Spanish-speaking immigrants. The impact increases when potential endogeneity in language skills is addressed via IV variables. Still, proficiency in Spanish does not help to get higher ranked occupations, measured via ISEI (International Socio-Economic Index) – and language skills neither contribute to explain occupational status, nor are endogenous to it, even after control for sample selection. The first result confirms the downward bias of the impact of the language proficiency on employment probabilities when the endogeneity problem is not accounted while the second responds to the particular occupational segregation in Spain amongst workers from different areas of the world

Language proficiency and immigrants’ labor market outcomes in post-crisis Spain

This paper analyses the impact of Spanish proficiency on first generation immigrants’ labor market outcomes, based on the Labor Force Survey 2014 ad hoc module on the “Labor market situation of migrants and their immediate descendants”. A very high level of proficiency in Spanish is found to enhance immigrants’ employability, particularly for non Spanish-speaking immigrants. The impact increases when potential endogeneity in language skills is addressed via IV variables. Still, proficiency in Spanish does not help to get higher ranked occupations, measured via ISEI (International Socio-Economic Index) – and language skills neither contribute to explain occupational status, nor are endogenous to it, even after control for sample selection. The first result confirms the downward bias of the impact of the language proficiency on employment probabilities when the endogeneity problem is not accounted while the second responds to the particular occupational segregation in Spain amongst workers from different areas of the world

Relación entre habilidades neuropsicológicas y comprensión lectora en Educación Primaria

La lectura es un proceso complejo en el que intervienen factores perceptivos, lingüísticos, cognitivos y neuropsicológicos. Algunos factores neuropsicológicos participan en el proceso lector desde su inicio, tales como los movimientos oculares que se realizan en la lectura, la motricidad y la lateralidad. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar la relación entre estos factores neuropsicológicos y la comprensión lectora en alumnos de Educación Primaria. Para ello se seleccionó una muestra de 52 niños de ocho años de edad en los que se evaluaron los movimientos oculares sacádicos para leer, los patrones motores básicos, la lateralidad y la comprensión lectora. Con los datos obtenidos se ha realizado un estudio descriptivo y correlacional cuyos resultados mostraron que existe una relación positiva y significativa entre las variables y que los alumnos con mejor habilidad de movimientos oculares sacádicos, mejor ejecución en patrones motores básicos y lateralidad homogénea obtuvieron mayores puntuaciones en comprensión lectora. Este estudio abre nuevas perspectivas teóricas y científicas para el aprendizaje de la lectura y la calidad educativa

Of Rats and People: A Select Comparative Analysis of Cue Competition, the Contents of Learning, and Retrieval

Select literature regarding cue competition, the contents of learning, and retrieval processes is summarized to demonstrate parallels and differences between human and nonhuman associative learning. Competition phenomena such as blocking, overshadowing, and relative predictive validity are largely analogous in animal and human learning. In general, strong parallels are found in the associative structures established during learning, as well as in the basic phenomena associated with information retrieval. Some differences arise too, such as retrospective evaluation, which seems easier to observe in human than in nonhuman animals. However, the parallels are sufcient to indicate that the study of learning in animals continues to be relevant to human learning and memory.This work was funded by grants PSI2014-52263-C2-1-P and PSI2014-52263-C2-2-P from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitivida

The Origin of Kinematically Persistent Planes of Satellites as Driven by the Early Evolution of the Cosmic Web in ΛCDM

Kinematically persistent planes (KPPs) of satellites are fixed sets of satellites co-orbiting around their host galaxy, whose orbital poles are conserved and clustered across long cosmic time intervals. They play the role of “skeletons,” ensuring the long-term durability of positional planes. We explore the physical processes behind their formation in terms of the dynamics of the local cosmic web (CW), characterized via the so-called Lagrangian volumes (LVs) built up around two zoom-in, cosmological hydro-simulations of Milky Way–mass disk galaxy + satellites systems, where three KPPs have been identified. By analyzing the LV deformations in terms of the reduced tensor of inertia (TOI), we find an outstanding alignment between the LV principal directions and the KPP satellites’ orbital poles. The most compressive local mass flows (along the eˆ3 eigenvector) are strong at early times, feeding the so-called eˆ3 -structure, while the smallest TOI axis rapidly decreases. The eˆ3 -structure collapse marks the end of this regime and is the timescale for the establishment of satellite orbital pole clustering when the Universe is ≲4 Gyr old. KPP protosatellites aligned with eˆ3 are those whose orbital poles are either aligned from early times or have been successfully bent at eˆ3 -structure collapse. KPP satellites associated with eˆ1 tend to have early trajectories already parallel to eˆ3 . We show that KPPs can arise as a result of the ΛCDM-predicted large-scale dynamics acting on particular sets of protosatellites, the same dynamics that shape the local CW environment

The Three Hundred project: shapes and radial alignment of satellite, infalling, and backsplash galaxies

Using 324 numerically modelled galaxy clusters, we investigate the radial and galaxy–halo alignment of dark matter subhaloes and satellite galaxies orbiting within and around them. We find that radial alignment depends on distance to the centre of the galaxy cluster but appears independent of the dynamical state of the central host cluster. Furthermore, we cannot find a relation between radial alignment of the halo or galaxy shape with its own mass. We report that backsplash galaxies, i.e. objects that have already passed through the cluster radius but are now located in the outskirts, show a stronger radial alignment than infalling objects. We further find that there exists a population of well radially aligned objects passing very close to the central cluster’s centre that were found to be on highly radial orbit

Quality of life of mothers at the sixth week and sixth month postpartum and type of infant feeding

Introduction: There is little scientific evidence on the relationship between maternal quality of life and type of infant feeding. The purpose of this study was to determine if there were differences in mother?s quality of life by type of infant feeding