Compound stimuli in paired-associate learning.

Abstract

In several paired-associate (PA) tasks, triads of words served as stimuli. The associative relationship between the words of a triad was systematically varied. Words of each H (horizontal) triad were interassociated, while those of the I (independent) triads were not. Words of the V (vertical) triads were associated with words of other V triads but not with each other. In Experiment I, 30 Ss learned each type of item. Performance on the H items was facilitated, and that on the V items was hindered (p < .001). Experiment II (N = 30) replicated this result and provided control data with single-word stimuli. PA performance with stimulus triads was always poorer than that with single-word stimuli (p < .001). Experiment III (N = 60) examined the generality of these results. A single view of PA learning is proposed to integrate several interpretations of the results, and implications for serial learning are discussed.This article reports three experiments that examine the effect of compound stimuli on paired-associate (PA) learning. Two of these experiments show that PA learning is facilitated when the ingredients of the compound stimulus are interassociated. The third experiment, however, limits the generality of this conclusion. These experiments provide empirical data that may help clarify the nature of the stimulus in serial learning.The "chaining hypothesis" of serial learning asserts that each item of a serial list comes to elicit the following item, but a number of direct experimental tests (e.g., Primoff, 1938;Young, 1959) have disconfirmed this hypothesis. In these experiments a serial list and a PA list were prepared such that each pair of adjacent items of the serial list became a pair of associates in the PA list; S then learned both lists in either order. Hereafter, this PA task is called a "chained PA task."According to the chaining hy-

Unlearning, spontaneous recovery, and the partial-reinforcement effect in paired-associate learning.

“…Horowitz, Norman, and Day (1966) have found evidence of associations being formed between response terms in a PA list and of such "induced" associations being stronger when the responses were practiced to a common stimulus. If compound associations generally are formed in a PA list, there is evidence that they are formed more quickly when the stimulus elements themselves are associated (Horowitz, Lippman, Norman, & McConkie, 1964). It is widely held that the decrement in learning due to nonreinforcement under reduced ORM is cut back by some positive factor (Goss, Nodine, Gregory, Taub, & Kennedy, 1962;Kausler, McLaughlin, & Kulick, 1962).…”

Cue effectiveness and abstraction in paired-associate learning.

“…It is sometimes suggested that the difficulty of a compound-response list is produced by the necessity to integrate or unitize the stimulus compound. Horowitz et al (1964) found that a triad of associated words used as stimuli produced faster learning than a triad of unrelated words, but a list with single words as stimuli was less difficult than either. Liftik and Leicht (1968) found somewhat similar results.…”

“…Paired-associate lists with single word CVCs as stimuli tend to be less difficult than with compounds of word and low-meaningful CVCs ; single low-similarity CVCs tend to be less difficult than compounds of low-and high-similarity CVCs (Cohen & Musgrave, 1966); single CVCs are less difficult than double (Greeno & Horowitz, 1968); and single-word stimuli are superior to multiple-word stimuli (Berlyne, Borsa, Craw, Gelman, & Mandell, 1965;Horowitz, Lippman, Norman, & McConkie, 1964;Pan, 1926). It has also been found that color stimuli are superior to compounds of colors and CVCs with normal children (Baumeister & Berry, 1968), to compounds of colors and CCCs (Solso, 1968a), and tend to be superior to compounds of colors and words (Baumeister & Berry, 1968;Solso, 1968a).…”