| Abstract: | 2 TESTS WERE MADE OF A THEORY WHICH ASSUMES THAT VERBAL-DISCRIMINATION (VD) LEARNING IS BASED UPON A FREQUENCY DIFFERENTIAL BETWEEN THE RIGHT AND WRONG WORDS. IN EXP. I 150 UNDERGRADUATES WERE GIVEN EITHER 0, 2, OR 5 FREE-RECALL LEARNING (FL) TRIALS ON A LIST OF WORDS PRIOR TO THE WORDS' BECOMING EITHER THE CORRECT OR INCORRECT MEMBERS OF PAIRS IN A VD LIST. WHEN WORDS FROM FL WERE CORRECT IN VD, PERFORMANCE ON VD LEARNING WAS NEARLY PERFECT ON ALL TRIALS. WHEN WORDS FROM FL BECAME INCORRECT IN VD LEARNING, 2 FL TRIALS HAD ESSENTIALLY NO INFLUENCE ON VD LEARNING; WITH 5 FL TRIALS PERFORMANCE WAS INITIALLY HIGH ON VD LEARNING, BUT PROGRESSED VERY SLOWLY OVER TRIALS. IN EXP. II 45 SS WERE FORCED TO VOICE BOTH THE CORRECT AND INCORRECT MEMBERS OF PAIRS IN A VD LIST. THE INTENT WAS TO MAKE LEARNING BASED ON A FREQUENCY DIFFERENTIAL DIFFICULT. LEARNING WAS MARKEDLY RETARDED AS COMPARED WITH CONTROLS. CONTROLS FORCED TO PRONOUNCE ONLY THE CORRECT RESPONSE PERFORMED BETTER THAN A GROUP LEFT TO THEIR OWN DEVICES. BOTH EXPERIMENTS ARE INTERPRETED AS SUPPORTING THE THEORY. (FRENCH SUMMARY) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
