Nine newborn chicks were trained on a successive, red-green discrimination task. At the start of discrimination training, the intensity of the green light (S -) was slowly faded in for six chicks and was presented at full intensity for the remaining three. While meeting the response criterion for errorless learning, the chicks conditioned with the fading procedure made five times fewer errors than the full-intensity group. It was concluded that preexperimental error experience is not a necessary condition for the development of errorless learning.
Eighteen food-deprived pigeons were divided into three groups and either hand-shaped or autoshaped to peck a response key illuminated with red or green light. Group 1 was autoshaped using a procedure that employed a 30-sec intertrial interval (lTI); the other two groups were hand shaped by the method of successive approximations, one (Group 2) with a 30-sec ITI, the other (Group 3) without. In subsequent discrimination training, the subjects in Groups 1 and 2 emitted significantly fewer errors than those in Group 3. The role of the ITI was explained with reference to the Rescorla-Wagner model of associative learning, modified to account for stimulus generalization. Implications of the data for the study of errorless learning and the comparison between hand shaping and autoshaping are discussed.
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