tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post6259413112746335151..comments2024-03-09T09:06:35.288+00:00Comments on Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists: A Test of Direct Learning (Michaels et al, 2008)Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-86831642645280981852017-11-24T17:17:53.432+00:002017-11-24T17:17:53.432+00:00I basically agree. I'm basically on board that...I basically agree. I'm basically on board that it's a hypothesis worth exploring. But it does make some strong claims about information spaces that need a lot more work to justify. That's ok though, we had to start somewhere and they were, at the very least, crystal clear at all times about what they were doing. Full points there!Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-25688920276581833082017-11-22T21:05:43.152+00:002017-11-22T21:05:43.152+00:00I had very mixed feelings about the Direct Learnin...I had very mixed feelings about the Direct Learning thing for a while. Then, at a meeting, I saw Michaels give a talk about it. (2011 in Brazil maybe?) Something clicked, and I have loved the idea since. <br /><br />That is not to say that I am in love with any particular experimental paradigm. <br /><br />Let's say you believe there is information in the environment that specifies opportunities for behavior, and that organisms can attune to such information over developmental and evolutionary time scales. It follows that in many situations there should exist (in the environment) information that specifies how to correct mistakes in attunement. That is a level more complex, and so it is harder to think about, and harder to set up good experiments about, but it is a solid proposal. <br /><br />I suspect that if Ecological Psychology had a much wider net of successes on the first order (perception of affordances), it would be easier to find ideal opportunities for exploring that second order (perception of how to correct affordance-perception errors). As it is, the rod-weilding work is one of the few super-well-explored paradigms, and I think that is the main justification for using it in the initial test. The results, while not perfect, seem good enough to justify much future work. Eric Charleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17412168482569793996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-1730831580756512392017-11-07T10:57:43.791+00:002017-11-07T10:57:43.791+00:00Hi Drew
The mechanistic approach is primarily abo...Hi Drew<br /><br />The mechanistic approach is primarily about not modelling anything until you have independent empirical evidence that the components in your model are, in fact, players in the mechanism under study. Right now the direct learning stuff is effectively model fitting data to a hypothetical description of a continuous space for which there is no independent evidence. Like I say, you have to start somewhere, but that functional analysis won't get you to mechanism.<br /><br />What I do when I want to identify information being used is a perturbation study (<a href="http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-perturbation-experiment-as-way-to.html" rel="nofollow">post on the general idea</a>, <a href="http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/identifying-visual-information-for.html" rel="nofollow">my current specific empirical focus</a>). I run those studies to identify variables and map their characteristics, and only then would I try to build an information space out of them.<br /><br />Now, my current working digging into information for coordination is revealing some complicated findings and I have a lot to do yet to align that work with the direct learning analyses. But long story short, Michaels & Jacobs dive in with some information space and fit data, which is a functional analysis. They should do a ton of work first to identify components, then build the information space out of those and test that directly. It is bloody hard though!Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-38584860272136111572017-11-06T18:12:31.904+00:002017-11-06T18:12:31.904+00:00Thanks for reviewing this work and providing your ...Thanks for reviewing this work and providing your assessment. Jeff Wagman and I had some fun applying these ideas to the study of auditory perception of object length. We thought the Michaels et al. explanation of the 1-d information space was sufficient for constructing information spaces and running the analyses ourselves with our own stimuli sets and data. I am in agreement with you that these attempts are good “first swings” and more work and attention is required. I also agree that perhaps the apparent continuous motion of learners through information spaces might be an artifact of the analysis (as communicated in your last post), but of course this ‘movement’ is typically discretized by block in the experimental design and subsequent analytic protocol. In my opinion, this is a limitation of the current analytic protocol, but I think progress could be made if this was innovated. What is your assessment/idea for building information spaces in a more ‘mechanistic, real-parts way’? From your last post, it looked like you were skeptical of implementing (and innovating) an information space analysis but here it looks like you might have thoughts on how to improve it. <br /><br />-Drew Abney<br />drewhamiltonabneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17193774663425974690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-90173881764268780762017-11-05T16:28:39.519+00:002017-11-05T16:28:39.519+00:00The Direct Learning hypothesis is almost certainly...The Direct Learning hypothesis is almost certainly wrong.<br /><br />The problem that ought to be most obvious to you, is that it is based on the same metaphysical assumptions as is the Representationalism that you reject.<br /><br />I won't say more at the moment, because you usually disagree with my occasional posts here -- perhaps because I have rejected those metaphysical assumptions.nwrickerthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13245981500899410679noreply@blogger.com