A paired-associate (PA) learning task in which the stimuli were strings of five consonants followed by a numeral and the responses were reorderings of the same five consonants was presented to college Ss. Each response string was related to its stimulus string by one of four permutation rules. Each rule was associated with one of the stimulus numerals. The four rules together segmented the consonant string into a hierarchical system of units. With standard PA instructions, there was an average of 4.06 trials to criterion in initial learning. When subsequently transferred to a list with five entirely new consonants but the same rules, 5"s performed virtually errorlessly. In responding, Ss revealed a tendency to pause in a pattern appropriate to the hierarchical units imposed by the permutation rules. However, the similarity of these experimentally induced rules with those involved in natural language behavior was rendered doubtful by the long experimental response latencies of nearly 5 sec. per rule.What is learned by a child when he acquires the ability to speak and to comprehend a natural language has been a matter of dispute. The knowledge that a speaker possesses of his language has been viewed, on the one hand, as a complex network of stimulus-response connections (Jenkins & Palermo, 1964;Mowrer, 1960;Osgood, 1953) and, on the other hand, as a system of rules which generate the well-formed utterances in his language (Chomsky, 1957(Chomsky, , 1965. According to the latter view, phrase structure rules and transformational rules are essential features of the syntax of all natural languages. Each of these types of rules are general enough that they can be applied to many different materials in addition to natural language. For example,
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