Gordon Bower

• PhD, 1959, Yale University
• Stanford University

A 4-light, 4-key probability learning task was altered by having S predict which 2 of the 4 lights would occur each trial. The question is whether S’s habit hierarchy is best represented as composed of 4 single-key habits from which two responses are successively selected, or composed of 6 unitary response-pair habits from which one pair is selecte...

Following training in a runway, two groups of rats were either confined in the goal box for 20 sec. during extinction trials or permitted to immediately jump out of the goal box. Contrary to the predictions of the interference theory, there were no differences between the groups in resistance to extinction. Within the jump group there was a moderat...

Spence’s theory predicts that preferential choice between two magnitudes of reward will be independent of drive level if the conditions insure equal experience with the alternative choice responses. This prediction was tested by training rats in a T maze to choose between four and three pellets of food reward, half the Ss under high and half under...

Confidence ratings were collected in a continuous paired-associate learning task in which items were presented three times each. Analysis of Type 2 operating characteristics showed no difference in the discriminability of correct responses from errors after one vs two reinforcements. Increasing confidence ratings across trials were attributable to...

The relation between memory and perceptual unitization was investigated. Serial strings of 12 letters were presented for S’s immediate recall. According to one grouping of successive letters, the string was a series of four familiar acronyms such as YMCA-PHD-FBI-TV; according to a different grouping, the same string appeared to be utter nonsense. A...

We tried to replicate mood-dependent memory retrieval in a two-list interference design, as reported earlier in Experiment 3 of Bower, Monteiro, and Gilligan (1978, “Emotional mood as a context for learning and recall,” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17, 573–585). Subjects in the experimental condition learned two word lists for fr...

We studied how rapidly subjects could retrieve the order of two actions in a goal hierarchy whose actions were temporally ordered. The subjects learned a four-level hierarchy of 27 goals and actions regarding steps for joining a secret club. Then, with respect to this hierarchy, they verified statements of the form “In order for you to accomplish X...

Memory schemata may influence the storage of information in memory either by enabling information relevant to the instantiated schema to be more easily comprehended or by selectively allocating processing resources to information that fits the schema. In the experiment reported here, decision times, recall performance, and recognition performance w...

Tests were conducted for specific retroactive and proactive interference in short-term recognition memory for paired-associates. Ss studied a set of 17 bigram-digit pairs, some bearing an A-B, A-C relation to each other, some an A-B, A-B relation, and some were A-B, D-C control items. Following one study trial, S rated selected pairs (half correct,...

Earlier experiments found that happy or sad subjects learn more about prose materials that are affectively congruent with their feelings. This study asked whether this memory effect was mediated by selective reminding. Subjects induced through hypnosis to feel happy or sad indicated whether or not happy or sad prompting phrases reminded them of a p...

We asked whether agreement between the affective quality of a word and a subject’s emotional mood would cause faster identification of that word. In Experiment 1, subjects induced to feel happy or angry were required to choose which of two words had been briefly presented. The target and distractor words were pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Mood-...

40 undergraduates learned paired-associate lists of nouns using 1 of 4 learning strategies: repetition of the pair, reading the pair as subject and object nouns in a meaningful sentence, generation of a meaningful sentence linking the 2 nouns, or visualization of a mental image in which the word referents were in vivid interaction. 1/2 the pairs we...

In this chapter, the authors discuss some of the influences of affective states on cognitive processes, especially those involved in memory and judgment. An important and influential idea for explaining mood effects on memory and judgment has been the affect priming theory. According to this view, the arousal of a mood or emotion spreads activation...

The author served as a research assistant with Neal Miller at Yale from 1955 to 1959. He narrates Miller's research activities on social learning and imitation, on personality and psychotherapy, and on brain structures mediating biological drives and rewards. He describes Miller's classroom teaching and relationships with graduate students. He pays...

The author summarizes his evolving interests from conditioning studies within a behaviorist orientation, thence to human memory, knowledge representation, and narrative understanding and memory. Arguing that the study of skilled reading provides a microcosm for revealing cognitive processes, he illustrates this by reviewing his research on the use...

The current research investigated one possible mechanism underlying false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. In the DRM paradigm, participants who study lists of related words (e.g., "table, sitting, bench ...") frequently report detailed memories for the centrally related but non-presented critical lure (e.g., "chair"). One p...

One goal of cognitive science is to gain a better understanding of text comprehension. The model is used for deriving inferences, for interpreting the text, for supplying what the text may describe in only a cryptic manner, and for evaluating statements. The situational model is important because it is largely what people remember about a text. Mos...

In 3 experiments, the authors provide evidence for a distinct category-invention process in unsupervised (discovery) learning and set forth a method for observing and investigating that process. In the 1st 2 experiments, the sequencing of unlabeled training instances strongly affected participants' ability to discover patterns (categories) across t...

In 3 experiments, the authors provide evidence for a distinct category-invention process in unsupervised (discovery) learning and set forth a method for observing and investigating that process. In the 1st 2 experiments, the sequencing of unlabeled training instances strongly affected participants' ability to discover patterns (categories) across t...

Memorializes Ernest R. Hilgard who wrote the influential texts Conditioning and Learning (1940, with D. Marquis), Theories of Learning (1948), Introduction to Psychology (1953) and Divided Consciousness (1977). He is well known for his work in the area of hypnosis and hypnotic analgesia. He helped establish the Stanford Laboratory for the Study of...

Memorializes Ernest R. Hilgard who wrote the influential texts Conditioning and Learning (1940, with D. Marquis), Theories of Learning (1948), Introduction to Psychology (1953) and Divided Consciousness (1977). He is well known for his work in the area of hypnosis and hypnotic analgesia. He helped establish the Stanford Laboratory for the Study of...

Generation often leads to increased memorability within a laboratory context (see, e.g., Slamecka & Graf, 1978). Of interest in the present study is whether the benefits of generation extend beyond item memory to context memory. To investigate this question, in three experiments, we asked subjects to remember in which of two contexts they had read...

In two experiments, we investigated how readers use information about temporal and spatial distance to focus attention on the more important parts of the situation model that they create during narrative comprehension. Effects of spatial distance were measured by testing the accessibility in memory of objects and rooms located at differing distance...

Five experiments related anaphor resolution to a classic memory variable, namely, interference created by multiple uses of a given object-concept, and by spatial distance of the referent from the reader's focus of attention. Participants memorized a diagram of a building with rooms containing objects, and then read narratives describing characters'...

Due to the advent of neuropsychology, it has become clear that there is a multiplicity of memory systems or, at the very least, of dissociably different modes of processing memory in the brain. As the Oxford Handbook of Memory demonstrates, the frontier of memory research has been enriched by breakthroughs of the last decades, with lines of continu...

We investigated the role of spatial distance in situation models, surface recency, and explicit mentioning of target items in the updating of situation models created from narratives. In 3 experiments, a distance effect on accessibility was observed: The accessibility of target items (objects and rooms) contained in the situation model decreased wi...

The impact of traumatic experiences on cognitive processes, especially memory, is reviewed. The major psychological sequelae of trauma (reexperiencing, avoidance, hypervigilance) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are noted and related to traditional views of fear conditioning. Evidence indicating enhanced memory for the gist of emotional eve...

The authors investigated the metrics of spatial distance represented in situation models of narratives. In 3 experiments, a spatial gradient of accessibility in situation models was observed: The accessibility of objects contained in the situation model decreased with increasing spatial distance between the object and the reader's focus of attentio...

The authors investigated the metrics of spatial distance represented in situation models of narratives. In 3 experiments, a spatial gradient of accessibility in situation models was observed: The accessibility of objects contained in the situation model decreased with increasing spatial distance between the object and the reader's focus of attentio...

Implicit and explicit memory tasks are interpreted within a traditional memory theory that distinguishes associations between different classes of memory units (sensory features, logogens, imagines, concepts, context tags). Associations from specific sensory features to logogens are strengthened by perceptual experiences, leading to specific percep...

In 4 experiments, the authors attempted to replicate an improvement in recall of target memories produced by a post-learning clue enabling participants to reorganize and segregate interfering material, as shown by G. H. Bower and T. Mann (1992). The 1st three experiments studied retroactive interference (RI) in free recall of an initial word list a...

The generality of effects of situation models on narrative comprehension was investigated. In three experiments, a spatial gradient of accessibility in situation models was observed. The accessibility of objects contained in the situation model decreased with increasing spatial distance between the object and the focus of attention in the readers’...

In 4 experiments, the authors attempted to replicate an improvement in recall of target memories produced by a post-learning clue enabling participants to reorganize and segregate interfering material, as shown by G. H. Bower and T. Mann (1992). The 1st three experiments studied retroactive interference (RI) in free recall of an initial word list a...

Four experiments investigated how the accessibility of a referent for an anaphoric noun pharase decreases with the spatial distance of the referent from the focus of attention within a situation model. In all experiments, subjects first memorized the diagram of a building and objects located in it, then read narratives describing characters′ activi...

The research project had as its goal the conduct of several experiments to examine people's ability to spontaneously classify and organize a large database of examples when no external tutor is there to inform them of the optimal organization. Throughout several experiments, we developed and tested three different, indirect measures of people's cat...

We investigated the task of predicting the outcomes of sporting events, in particular, basketball games. In two experiments, college students predicted the outcomes of a series of National Basketball Association (NBA) games. Following each prediction, the subject received feedback in the form of the actual outcome of the NBA game. After a period of...

This target article by Estes (1950) sparked the mathematical learning theory movement, which took seriously the goal of predicting quantitative details of behavioral data from standard learning experiments. The central constructs of Estes's theory were stimulus variability, stimulus sampling, and stimulus-response association by contiguity, all cas...

This research aimed to discriminate between 2 general approaches to unsupervised category learning, one based on learning explicit correlational rules or associations within a stimulus domain (autocorrelation) and the other based on inventing separate categories to capture the correlational structure of the domain (category invention). An "attribut...

In 4 experiments on retroactive interference (RI), we varied paired-associate learning lists that produced either appreciable or negligible forgetting. When the category of the stimulus word predicted its response word category, and the response was relatively unique within its category, learning was extremely rapid, and negative transfer and RI we...

Rather than being viewed as disintegration, the apparent fragmentation of psychology is interpreted positively as the inevitable consequence of increasing specialization of knowledge as our science matures and our range of applications expands. The field's specialization creates the familiar tensions regarding requirements of training and professio...

In three experiments we investigated cryptomnesia (unconscious plagiarism) and source memory using a word-search puzzle task. Subjects first alternated with a "computer partner" in locating words from 4 puzzles. They then attempted to recall their previously generated items as well as to locate additional new words. Substantially more plagiarism wa...

In a series of experiments we investigated the nature of mental representations created during narrative comprehension. Subjects learned the layout of a research center and then read a series of stories about characters performing various tasks in the center. Accessibility of information was measured by periodically interrupting the narratives with...

naturalistic observation / correlational studies / controlled experiments / measuring experimental effects / isolating causal effects / coordinating theory with observables / experiments on human cognitive processes / characterizing psychological processes / analyzing representational types / additive factors method /dual tasks / signal detection t...

Our experiments demonstrate that interference of an interpolated list of items with recall of an original list can be substantially reduced by forming Ss just before testing how to reorganize and simplify the interpolated material. In Experiments 1 and 2, Ss better recalled an initial serial list of letters when informed at testing that an interpol...

Our experiments demonstrate that interference of an interpolated list of items with recall of an original list can be substantially reduced by forming Ss just before testing how to reorganize and simplify the interpolated material. In Experiments 1 and 2, Ss better recalled an initial serial list of letters when informed at testing that an interpol...

A person's mood may directly affect a judgment of the uncertainty of a future event. Subjective probabilities were reported by subjects in a happy, neutral, or sad mood for personal and nonpersonal events. Two moods were induced by having the subject focus on particularly happy and sad personal experiences. Large, consistent mood effects are indica...

This research deals with unsupervised learning of categories (UL) and how such learning is affected by the sequencing of training instances. Two general models of UL are described, one based on learning explicit associations between correlated features (associative model), and the other based on creating distinct schemas to represent each category...

This chapter reports on a long-term research program intended to apply the new techniques of slip induction to the classical problem of Freudian slips. We will discuss the program’s rationale, early encouraging evidence, and two flawed attempts at systematic replication. These difficulties do not directly contradict the earlier positive results, so...

This chapter discusses that the attribute-listing experiments revealed patterns of unsupervised learning characterized by initial discovery of categories based on featural contrasts with previous default expectations, gradual learning of defaults within a new category, and an overall bias to report informative features of the instances. The task al...

In demonstrations of part-list cuing inhibition, subjects who are shown a subset of studied list words recall fewer noncue words than subjects not shown such part-list cues. We propose that part-list inhibition is governed in part by an incongruency principle: Inhibition occurs to the extent that part-list cues induce a retrieval framework differen...

In demonstrations of part-list cuing inhibition, subjects who are shown a subset of studied list words recall fewer noncue words than subjects not shown such part-list cues. We propose that part-list inhibition is governed in part by an incongruency principle: Inhibition occurs to the extent that part-list cues induce a retrieval framework differen...

The experimental setting I will be discussing experiments in which normal volunteers, people like you or me, are induced to feel a mild emotion like happiness, sadness or anger for a brief time. We then look at how those feelings affect their memory or thinking. We make people happy, sad or angry by doing things like showing them happy or sad movie...

This chapter describes situation-based inferences that readers make during narrative comprehension and the distinction between text-based inferences and situation-based inferences. Text-based inferences are backward directed in the sense that readers apparently do not draw these inferences at the time they are invited by a sentence; but the inferen...

Three experiments showed that mood influences achievement attributions and that cognitive processes underlie these effects. In Experiment 1, happy Ss made more internal and stable attributions for success than failure in typical 'life dilemmas'. In Experiment 2, attributions for real-life exam performance were more internal and stable in a happy th...

Three experiments showed that mood influences achievement attributions and that cognitive processes underlie these effects. In Experiment 1, happy Ss made more internal and stable attributions for success than failure in typical ‘life dilemmas’. In Experiment 2, attributions for real-life exam performance were more internal and stable in a happy th...

M. A. Gluck and G. H. Bower (see record 1989-00340-001) presented an adaptive network model of human classification in which associative weights are modified according to R. A. Rescorla and A. R. Wagner (1972) conditioning theory, a special case of the Widrow-Hoff/LMS learning rule. Presenting empirical data from a series of artificial medical cla...

Readers of stories construct mental models of the situation and characters described. They infer causal connections relating characters' actions to their goals. They also focus attention on characters' movements, thereby activating nearby parts of the mental model. This activation is revealed in readers' faster answering of questions about such par...

chapter in S. A. Christianson (Ed.) The handbook of emotion and memory. Erlbaum, 1992.

Provides a distinction among several senses of awareness and unconscious behaviors, most of which are commonly accepted. Provides a neo-behavioral interpretation of :repressed memories" while noting the relative absence of strong experimental evidence for it. Ends with discussion of 'hypnotic phenomena of analogs of repression and unconscious auito...

What is cognitive science? Foundations of Cognitive Science answers this question in a way that gives a feeling for the excitement, ferment, and accomplishments of this new field. It is the first broad treatment of cognitive science at an advanced level. Complete and authoritative, Foundations of Cognitive Science covers the major architectures; pr...

The present study examines whether readers of narratives focus on information relevant to the protagonist's perspective even when this information is implied rather than explicitly stated in the narrative. It also examines whether the protagonist's perspective is associated with this character's mental as well as physical location. We investigated...

Six experiments with a total of 168 college students failed to provide stable evidence for mood-dependent retrieval (MDR), a special case of context-dependent memory. In Exps 1–3, interlist interference was increased in order to make mood a more salient retrieval cue. Exps 4–6 introduced attributions of causal belonging in order to strengthen the b...

Five experiments are briefly described in this report, and plans for three further experiments are set forth. We are investigating the consequences of people forming concepts or categories after they've been exposed to a collection of instances (stimulus objects, patterns, events) for which certain features are highly inter-correlated. One primary...

We used adaptive network theory to extend the Rescorla-Wagner (1972) least mean squares (LMS) model of associative learning to phenomena of human learning and judgment. In three experiments subjects learned to categorize hypothetical patients with particular symptom patterns as having certain diseases. When one disease is far more likely than anoth...

This paper surveys current empirical and theoretical knowledge about how affective states influence social judgments. Early work on the role of emotions in social perception is reviewed, followed by a discussion of contemporary socio-cognitive theories seeking to explain such effects. Several of our empirical studies are summarised, demonstrating a...

This paper explores the promise of simple adaptive networks as models of human learning. The least-mean-squares (LMS) learning rule of networks corresponds to the Rescorla-Wagner model of Pavlovian conditioning, suggesting interesting parallels in human and animal learning. We review three experiments in which subjects learned to classify patients...

Most behavioral scientists believe schizophrenia is a disease of the central nervous system, but the disease is recognized exclusively by the behavior of its victims. Disorders of thinking, emotional expression, motor functioning, and social interaction are among the prominent behavioral symptoms of schizophrenia. Since there are as yet no agreed u...

This book presents the contributions of the members of an Advanced Research Workshop on Cogni ti ve Science Perspectives on Emotion, Motivation and Cognition. The Workshop, funded mainly by the NATO Scientific Affairs Division, together with a contribution from the (British) Economic and Social Research Council, was conducted at II Ciocco, Tuscany,...

How does mood affect the way we learn about, judge, and remember characteristics of other people? This study looked at the effects of mood on impression formation and person memory. Realistic person descriptions containing positive and negative details were presented to subjects experiencing a manipulated happy or sad mood. Next, impression-formati...

We investigated the accessibility of information from situation models during narrative comprehension. Subjects memorized a diagram of a building and then read narratives describing a person moving through the building in order to achieve a goal. To probe accessibility, we periodically interrupted the narrative by presenting the names of two object...

Although personality traits are commonly assumed to be represented in memory as schemata, little research has addressed whether such schemata can be learned from observation. Subjects in three studies classified 60 person instances into group members and nonmembers as defined by the instances' match to a complex personality prototype. To simulate l...

In this study we examine the roles of semantic reference and of grammatical morphology in the learning of an artificial syntax. Subjects assigned to one of three training conditions viewed sentences from a miniature phrase structure language. In the reference field condition, subjects saw sentences which each referred to an array of geometric figur...

The present study explores the effects of age on the priming of alternate homophone spellings and recognition memory. Sixteen young and sixteen elderly adults were given a general information test, a spelling test, and a test of recognition memory. By embedding the less frequently spelled member of different homophone units (e.g., write vs. right)...

The mood-dependent retrieval hypothesis states that mood will enhance recall by acting as a recall cue if the stimuli have been learned initially in the same mood. Material learned in a happy mood will be best recalled when the person returns to a happy mood; the same holds for a sad mood. Mood-dependent retrieval effect has been regulary demonstra...

We comment on a failure to replicate mood-dependent retrieval of memories that was reported in this journal by Wetzler in 1985. Wetzler's procedures for obtaining the effect were reasonable so we attempt to explain Wetzler's result and integrate it with other recent work on mood-dependent retrieval.

Examined the impact of happy and sad moods on efficacy judgments concerning a variety of activities in 16 undergraduates who scored between 9 and 12 on the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility—Form A. The mood was induced by having hypnotized Ss recall and revive their feelings about a romantic success or failure. Changes in efficacy that...

We comment on the article by Hasher, Rose, Zacks, Sanft, & Doren (1985) in which they failed to find mood-congruent learning (MCL). MCL occurs whenever subjects learn more about materials that are congruent with their moods (e.g., depressed subjects learn more sad material). Hasher et al. failed to observe MCL with normal college students who score...

We comment on the article by Hasher, Rose, Zacks, Sanft, & Doren (1985) in which they failed to find mood-congruent learning (MCL). MCL occurs whenever subjects learn more about materials that are congruent with their moods (e.g., depressed subjects learn more sad material). Hasher et al. failed to observe MCL with normal college students who score...

Interpreting our own and others' social behaviors is an important cognitive task in everyday life. Recent work in cognitive psychology suggests that temporary mood states may have a significant effect on the way information about common social events is processed. This study investigated how (a) a person's current mood, (b) the target of the judgme...

Responds to the criticism of F. L. Royer (see record 1984-30400-001) by contending that the present authors prefer an interpretation of the Block Design Test in terms of individual difference variables rather than stimulus characteristics. It is suggested that Royer's variables do not have the general application that he claims for them. (10 ref)...

present an extensive series of empirical investigations on the effects of hypnotically induced emotions on learning and memory (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Simulations of human cognitive processes often employ discrimination nets to model the access of permanent memory. We consider two types of discrimination nets—EPAM and positive-property-only nets—and argue that they have insufficient psychological validity. Their deficiencies arise from negative properties, insufficient sensitivity to the discrimi...

Royer (1984) criticizes our analysis of the Block Design Test (Schorr, Bower, & Kiernan, 1982) more for form than substance. We prefer an interpretation in terms of individual difference variables rather than stimulus characteristics. In addition, Royer's variables do not appear to have the general application that he claims for them. Royer (1984)...

This paper reviews my research on emotional influences on memory and judgement. First, it is found that when people are feeling happy, sad, or angry, they selectively attend to and learn more about stimulus material that is congruent with their feeling. Beyond selective attention, it is hypothesized that this congruity effect on learning arises bec...

Two experiments examined whether spatial information judged from cognitive maps contains the functional euclidean properties of real maps. In Experiment 1, the six directions between sets of threetriad locations in a town were judged from memory. The angle formed by the two judged directions from a location to the other two locations in a triad was...

Groups of elderly adults were taught to learn name-to-face associations using one of three different techniques. In a control group (no image) participants were taught for each face-name pair to select a prominent facial feature and to transform the surname into a concrete word. Persons in a second group (image) additionally were taught to employ i...

People's judgments about important elements in narrative episodes were studied. Subjects chose the protagonist's goal as most important, then actions, outcomes, complications, and lastly background and modifiers. A statement's importance correlated with its likelihood of recall and inclusion in a summary. Relating episodes to a Plan schema, further...

Block-design construction tasks reliably assess cognitive deficits caused by brain injury. The important aspects of this task were examined in 4 studies with 46 undergraduates. Two problem-solving strategies were identified: (1) an analytic strategy in which Ss mentally segmented each block in the design to be constructed and (2) a synthetic strate...

Two experiments plus a pilot investigated the role of melodic structure on short-term memory for musical notation by musicians and nonmusicians. In the pilot experiment, visually similar melodies that had been rated as either "good" or "bad" were presented briefly, followed by a 15-sec retention interval and then recall. Musicians remembered good m...