C. W. Koutstaal

LATENCY OF VERBAL REPRODUCTIONS AS A VARIABLE IN VOCAL PAIRED-ASSOCIATE LEARNING

Some CCVCs used by Smith and Koutstaal (1972) as stimuli in a paired-associate learning study resulted in noticeable delays in attempted vocalizations or subvocalizations. Latencies of vocalizations of CCVCs representing the four phonological categories of the stimuli were timed to determine whether a monotonic function would be obtained as for trials to criterion in the learning study. A markedly non-monotonic function resulted. Latency was rejected as a variable contributing to differences in trials to criterion for the paired-associate task. Practice effects were: (a) decrease in mean latencies for all categories, (b) reduction in range of correlations, and (c) an increase in mean correlations from .66 to .87 (N = 40).

PHONOLOGICAL EXTRAPOLATIONS ABOUT EFFORT AFTER RATINGS OF PHONEMIC CCVCS BY NATIVE SPEAKERS OF PORTUGUESE

Effort ratings of phonemes in the order of CCVC that had been scaled for language distance from English by Greenberg and Jenkins (1964) were obtained from 28 native speakers of Portuguese, a language with few if any words in the order of CCVC. Mean scale values correlated .85 with S-scale values of the CCVCs. Mean scale values for effort ratings by native speakers of American English, Dutch, and Portuguese were plotted against Koutstaal, et al.s (1972) categories for the CCVCs. The curves were judged to be comparable. Effort of pronunciation is discussed as a determinant of phonological patterns of words of any language.

A Savings Test of the Koutstaal-Smith Theory for Paired-Associate Learning of Nouns in UMBU

Koutstaal, Smith, and Panyards (1972) theory for the serial and paired-associate learning of alphabetic cues was extended by Smith and Koutstaal (1972) to the learning of phonemic CCVCs. A monotonic function was predicted and obtained for the four categories of the linguistic theory for both initial and second learning after 7 mo. A linguistic theory for the paired-associate learning of words in Umbu is discussed.