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Procedural memory is characterised by a relative resistance to pathology, making its assessment of the utmost importance. However, few studies have looked at the cognitive processes involved in cognitive procedural learning. In an initial experiment, we studied the role of different cognitive functions in massed cognitive procedural learning. Our results confirmed the existence of three separate learning phases and, for the first time, demonstrated the involvement of episodic memory and executive functions in the first learning phase. In a second experiment, we studied the effect of distributed learning conditions on the dynamics of procedural learning. This second study confirmed our results but showed that these conditions slow down the process of cognitive procedural learning. Our overall findings call into question the status of functionally autonomous memory system that is currently allotted to procedural memory, and suggest that the role of nonprocedural cognitive components should be taken into account in patient rehabilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on inductive reasoning shows that when testing hypotheses, people are biased toward the use of confirmatory strategies (P. C. Wason, 1960). In the present article, the authors presented 2 studies showing how people use confirmation and disconfirmation strategies during actual interaction in problem solving. Study 1 showed that participants were able to learn to use disconfinnation when confronted with a low-competence, nonthreatening partner. When the partner was high in competence (thereby threatening the participant's competence), participants used confirmation, even when the partner used dis-confirmation. In Study 2, the authors aimed at generalizing the aforementioned results by exploring the hypothesis that disconfirmation stems from the possibility of diverging from norms. Participants who were confronted with the violation of a conversational norm used a high proportion of disconfirmation, whatever the source of influence. When there was no violation but there was a low-competence partner, the proportion of disconfirmation was high; when there was no violation but there was a high-competence partner, the proportion of disconfirmation was low. The authors discussed the interpersonal functions of confirmation and disconfirmation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated individuals' ability to use negative evidence in hypothesis testing. We compared performance in two versions of Wason's (1960) rule discovery problem. In the original version, a triple of numbers- {2, 4, 6}- was presented as an example of a rule that the experimenter had in mind (i.e., ''increasing numbers''). Participants had to discover the rule by proposing new triples. In the other version, the same triple was presented as a counterexample to the experimenter's rule (i.e., ''decreasing numbers''). We predicted that, in both conditions, participants would form hypotheses based on the features of the triple, and test only instances of the hypothesized rule. However, in the counter-example condition, such focused testing would invariably produce negative evidence. As a consequence, participants would be forced to revise their hypotheses. The reported results corroborated our predictions: Participants solved the counter-example version significantly better than the original problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]