This study tests the assumption that in the A-B, A-C transfer paradigm the unreinforced evocation of covert or overt first-list responses during the acquisition of the second list results in the unlearning of the first-list associations. In an RI design using the A-B, A-C paradigm the work groups received interpolated trials on a second list in which the type of responses either remained the same as in List 1 or was different. Free recall of List 1 associations revealed greater RI and more interlist in trusions for the conditions using the same type of responses. It appears that the degree of unlearning depends upon the frequency with which first-list responses are elicited during second-list learning. These results are consistent with the position that unlearning is a process sharing some of the functional characteristics of experimental extinction.
The conditions and characteristics of the recovery of first-list associations following the end of interpolated learning (IL) were examined in five experiments on retroactive inhibition. In Exp. I-IV, recovery was studied as a function of the paradigm of transfer and the temporal arrangement of original learning (OL), IL, and the test of recall (MMFR). In the experimental treatments, -S"s learned three successive paired-associate lists conforming to either the A-B, A-C, A-D or the A-B, C-D, E-F paradigm. In one experimental arrangement the IL-test interval was varied, and in the other the temporal point of interpolation (TPI) was varied. Both manipulations yielded evidence of first-list recovery: first-list recall increased as a function of the IL-test interval and was greater when IL occurred early in the retention interval than when it immediately preceded the retention test. Recovery was found to depend critically on an adequate degree of OL. The increases in first-list recall were comparable for the two paradigms. Greater changes in performance were produced by manipulation of the TPI than of the IL-test interval. In Exp. V, recovery of backward associations was investigated under the A-B, C-B and A-B, B-C paradigms, and a trend toward recovery was found only for the latter. The results are viewed as consistent with the hypothesis that recovery reflects primarily the dissipation of response set interference, i.e., of the tendency established during IL to suppress the responses from earlier lists.The question of whether unlearning is a as the interval between the end of IL and reversible process has critical implications for the test of first-list retention is lengthened, current analyses of the mechanisms of in-Experimental tests of this hypothesis have terference in forgetting.The reduced focused on temporal changes in retention availability of first-list associations after in-under the A-B, A-C paradigm as measured terpolated learning (IL), which is taken as by the method of modified free recall evidence of unlearning, has been widely (MMFR). The MMFR test has been attributed to the operation of a process hav-viewed as providing a relatively pure meaing the functional properties of experimental sure of unlearning on the assumption that extinction (cf. Keppel, 1968; Postman, performance under this procedure is immune 1961). It follows that unlearned associa-to the effects of response competition and tions, like extinguished conditioned re-cannot be influenced by failures of list difsponses, should show spontaneous recovery ferentiation.
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