Effect of perceptual pretraining on reversal and nonreversal shifts.

Abstract

Experimental Ss (Ist-grade children) received in succession (a) nonreinforced pretraining in making same-different judgments to stimuli varying in height and brightness, (b) a reinforced-discrimination task in which stimuli varied simultaneously in height and brightness, and (c) either a reversal shift of the initial discrimination (J Ss) or a nonreversal shift (J Ss). Control Ss received the same discrimination task and shifts but preceded by a picture-completion and a picture-arrangement test. Ss in the experimental-reversal group required significantly fewer trials to reach criterion than Ss in the experimental-nonreversal and control-reversal groups. The control-reversal and control-nonreversal groups did not differ. The results are interpreted within a differentiation theory of discrimination learning.

Dimensional Preference and Discrimination Shift Learning in Children

“…It is possible that both S's ability to respond selectively and the strength of his selective response are augmented by participation in the preference test, and that such augmentation may contribute significantly to the facilitating and interfering effects of assignment to preferred versus nonpreferred dimensions, respectively. This consideration gains weight in the light of experiments showing significant changes in DSL by young children following a brief period of nonreinforced perceptual pretraining with the task stimuli (Tighe 1965;Tighe & Tighe 1968). The present experiment studies this issue by comparing the relations which obtain between DSL and dimension preference when the latter is measured before versus after learning.…”

Learning, Remembering, and Understanding

“…Stevenson and White provide extensive reviews of the great deal of information that was gathered from a consideration of children learning in those settings. This was a prolific period of research and we gained a great deal of information of lasting value, especially concerning selective attention (Zeaman & House, 1963), symbolization (Berlyne, 1970;Kendler & Kendler, 1962;Reese, 1962), hypothesis testing (Levine, 1969), curiosity and exploration (Berlyne, 1970), learning sets (Harlow, 1959;Reese, 1968), stimulus differentiation (Tighe, 1965), social learning (Bandura & Walters, 1963) and behavioral engineering (Bijou & Baer, 1967;Lumsdaine & Glaser, 1960;Skinner, 1971).…”

Presidential address of division 15 learning hierarchies

“…For example, in the verbal paired-associate learning field, the evidence reviewed by Battig (1968) is to the effect that the learning of paired associates is typically facilitated by prior discrimination learning on stimulus-terms and response-terms, as well as by prior learning of stimulus coding responses. When one looks at categorizing skills (or concepts) like those exhibited by children in performing reversal-shift tasks, recent investigations such as those of Tighe (1965), Smiley and Weir (1966), and Johnson and White (1967) clearly demonstrate the importance of relevant prior learning of dimensional discriminations for transfer to the reversal task. Similarly, the different sort of classifying required in transposition tasks is shown to derive positive transfer from prior discrimination learning in the studies of Beaty and Weir (1966) and Caron (1966).…”