Jack Richardson

The learning of concept names mediated by concept examples

Summary This study paired concept examples with nonsense syllables in an attempt to produce positive transfer to learning the concept names as responses to the syllables. The results with dominance concepts were negative but there were large amounts of transfer with class concepts. When different examples of a class concept were paired with a syllable each time it was presented then the class name was often given as an association to the syllable but this did not occur when only one example of a concept was paired with a syllable. It was suggested that use of different examples of a concept tended to produce syllable-name learning while the examples were being presented and that the use of a single example of a concept simply provided a response which mediated learning when the syllable and class name was presented in a paired-associate list.

Facilitation of mediated transfer by instructions, B-C training, and presentation of the mediating response

This study used dominance concepts in a B-C, A-B, A-C mediation paradigm, where B was a noun, or group of nouns, and C was the common descriptive response. Presenting the B-C pairs increased the transfer from A-B to A-C when B was a group of nouns, but simply presenting the C terms had no effect. Instructions concerning the relationship of the A-B and A-C lists and presenting the B terms during the A-C learning produced slightly faster A-C learning when B was a single noun. Increasing the anticipation interval on the A-C list from 2 to 4 sec facilitated the A-C learning when it was preceded by instructions concerning the relationship of the two lists and when the B terms were presented during the A-C learning.

The locus of Mediation and the duration of the anticipation interval in a transfer paradigm

An A-B, B-C, A-C paradigm was used with dominance materials so that the B terms were nouns and the C terms were restricted associations to the nouns. The Example condition, in which a single noun was paired with the A term in the A-B stage, produced more positive transfer than the Mediation condition, which paired a group of nouns with A in the A-B stage. It was concluded that transfer in the Mediation condition in previous experiments, which used the B-C, A-B, A-C paradigm, was partially due to A-C learning during A-B presentation. It was shown that most of the positive transfer to A-C learning was related to pairs for which Ss recalled the correct B term both before and after A-C learning. The anticipation interval was varied for the A-C paired-associate learning but there was no indication of an interaction between anticipation interval and mediation. It was suggested that the lack of differential effect of variation in AI might be due either to mediation of the control items or to a comparison of mediated and control items which had been learned to different degrees.

The effect of B-C presentation and anticipation interval on mediated transfer

This study used dominance concepts in a B-C, A-B, A-C mediation paradigm. B-C presentation resulted in significant positive transfer and in a trend toward negative transfer in a Re-paired condition. An A-C matching task showed the same general effects as A-C learning. Increasing the anticipation interval on the A-C list from 2 to 4 sec tended to facilitate performance in both the positive and negative transfer conditions but had very little effect on the control condition.

Latencies of implicit associative responses and positive transfer in paired-associate learning

The B-C-D associative chains from Russell and Storms (1955) were pretrained and then presented to Ss who were required to respond by saying either the word presented, the next word in the chain, or the last word in the chain. The latencies of the responses increased with the number of implicit associative responses assumed to occur. The second experiment used the word chains in a positive transfer paradigm and found more positive transfer with a 4-sec test-list anticipation interval than with a 1-sec interval. The third experiment used antonyms and synonyms in an A-B, A-B′ paradigm and the amount of positive transfer was again a function of the test-list anticipation interval. The results were discussed in relation to previous studies which have failed to find that positive transfer was a function of test-like anticipation interval.

Latencies of implicit verbal responses and the effect of the anticipation interval on mediated transfer

Letters of the alphabet were presented to S s who were required to respond by saying either the letter presented, the next letter in the alphabet, or the second letter in the alphabet. The latencies of the responses increased with the number of implicit verbal responses assumed to occur and differences remained even after 63 presentations of each of eight letters. The second experiment used the letter material in a transfer paradigm. The stimuli in the two lists were the same and the second-list response was a letter two steps in the alphabet beyond the first-list response. There was no positive transfer to the second list when it was presented with a 1-sec anticipation interval and large positive transfer with a 3-sec anticipation interval. The results were discussed in terms of a mediation hypothesis.

Response selection in paired-associate learning

Ss were presented pairs of items on study cycles; on test cycles Ss were presented the stimulus items and required either to recall the correct response or to indicate the correct response from three alternatives. It was demonstrated that Ss who chose the correct responses from the alternatives tended to select from both stimulus and response compounds so that the association was between stimulus and response components. The amount of selection from the response compounds was comparable to that from the stimulus compounds.

Stimulus selection and the number of stimulus components

The number of word components in the compound stimuli of paired-associate lists were varied, and the words within a compound were presented either in a constant or in a variable order from trial to trial. The number of components, above one, had no appreciable effect on the difficulty of learning, and the variable order lists were more difficult than the constant order. Recall with the word components as cues showed that the amount of selection decreased with the variable order lists as the number of components increased. With the constant order lists, selection tended to remain constant as number of components increased. This was interpreted as the result of the availability of a rule for selection in the constant order conditions.