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E. C. Tolman emphasized the purposiveness of behavior — the idea that much of our behavior is goal-directed. For instance, employees who aim for a promotion work diligently to meet their targets. Tolman argued that when classical conditioning and operant conditioning occur, the organism acquires certain expectations. In classical conditioning, a child might fear a dog because they expect it to bite. In operant conditioning, a person might consistently work overtime because they expect a...
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Do Humans Use Push-Down Stacks When Learning or Producing Center-Embedded Sequences?

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Adults can learn complex grammars, but surprisingly, both center-embedded and cross-serial sequences are processed using a queue memory, not a stack. This challenges assumptions about cognitive sequence processing.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Complex sequences are fundamental to human cognition across language, music, and logic.
  • The underlying cognitive mechanisms for learning and processing abstract grammars remain largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how adults learn and represent center-embedded and cross-serial artificial grammars.
  • To test the memory architectures (stacks vs. queues) involved in processing these complex sequences.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized an artificial grammar learning task with untrained generalization tests.
  • Analyzed error patterns, response times, and employed a Bayesian mixture model.
  • Compared sequence generation using stack and queue memory models.

Main Results:

  • Adults successfully learned both center-embedded and cross-serial grammars.
  • Cross-serial grammars were learned and produced more easily than center-embedded ones.
  • Contrary to expectations, no evidence supported a stack architecture for center-embedded sequences; a queue architecture was indicated for both.

Conclusions:

  • The findings challenge the assumption that stack architectures are necessary for center-embedded sequence processing.
  • Both center-embedded and cross-serial sequences appear to be generated using a queue (first-in-first-out) memory architecture.
  • Cognitive sequence processing may rely on a more unified memory mechanism than previously thought.