🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <7911@shemp.UCLA.EDU> berke@CS.UCLA.EDU (Peter Berke) writes:
>learning-disabled  children.   I maintain that:  Mimicry behavior
>is integral to or forms the basis for animal learning.   Directly

There's a large body of research that suggests that this is not true.

>This is a simple, to me, an obvious claim.  The question is,  how

And like many "simple, obvious" claims, it nmay not have any basis in fact.

>Question 1:  Are there any measures of general  learning  ability
>that  are  commonly  accepted?  If not, what measures of learning
>ability do you use (or know of), whether they purport to  measure
>verbal  learning,  skill  acquisition, or any other behavior that
>can be classified as learning?

The experimental analysis of behavior?  Have you read any?  These
are basis research methods in behavioral science.  What's your
background?  It doesn't sound like it's psychology.

>In "cognitive science" and related fields there is a lot of hubub
>currently  about new and better brain models. I have my own which
>I call Network Recombination. I refer to "learning and memory" as
>a  unified process of learning/memory because of the implications
>of my model. If you ascribe to a  model  of  how  brain  activity
>produces  the  phenomenon  of  learning/memory  (or "learning" or
>"memory"  separately),  I  would  appreciate  an  answer  to  the
>following question:
>
>Question  2:   Does  your  model  make  any   predictions   about
>intermodal  transfer  of abilities? Specifically, say a subject's
>verbal skills are poor and so she does poorly on vocabulary tests
>which  Thorndike  (in  Human Learning, 1931, p.174) considers "an
>excellent intelligence test."   Say I now train  the  subject  in
>physical   skills   to  increase  discrimination,  analysis,  and
>creative abilities (defined primitively below).   How  much  will
>these  abilities transfer to verbal or quantitative skills?  What
>form will the transfer take?  Or will there be none?

Again these are basic questions of cognitive psychology.  Have you read
at all?  Do you think folks on the net produce less "hubub" than the
published literature contains?

>I appreciate all opinions and advice, especially from people  who
>have  worked  with learning-disabled children (and even more from

Right. Anecdotal evidence is always better than research data :-).

>people to whom this posting  seems  based  on  my  ignorance  and
>misconceptions).   But I would like to specifically request those
>putting forth "mind models" for predictions of their  models.   I
>would  like to QUANTIFY increase in general learning ability, and
>so the predictions of specific models with specific properties is
>necessary.
>
>If there is no such thing as general  learning  ability,  then  I
>would  like  to  QUANTIFY  transfer of abilities from physical to
>verbal or intellectual skills, or verify that there is none.
>
>Can you help me?

Nope.  I gave up on this field years ago.  I can only state that I
agree that cognitive psych. is more noise than substance.  As for
"brain models" in general, they're good at helping cognitive
psychologists understand computers (it's curious that mental models
have paralleled the development of computer architecture, not the
other was around.  Computer hardware isn't sophisticated enough
yet to provide the models that cognitive psychologists need to
model the brains of even simple organisms.)

Psychology is a field in which you can have a lot of success.  All
you have to do is come up with a model, and then design research
that supports your model.  That's easy and rewarding.  The hard thing
to do is to design and conduct research that actually _tests_ your
model.  There's no incentive to do so.  Grant money, tenure, even
getting your degree (I assume from your inquiry that you're still
after one) depend on producing research _results_.  Until that
changes (unless we get lucky) psychology is a nowhere field that
produces little of value.

>follow-ups, perhaps sci.research.  It has little traffic.

Cognitive psychologists can flame to /dev/null.  I only listen
to opinions I already agree with :-)

Tom Blakely (former psychologist, now a programmer)