Further Evidence of One-Trial Associative Learning

Rock, Irvin; Heimer, Walter

doi:10.2307/1420207

Cited by 50 publications

(31 citation statements)

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“…Groups CI and C2 were found to differ significantly from OOC at p < .001 and p < .05, respectively. DlSCUSSION The results of the analysis over number of errors to a criterion of 10 correct associations are in agreement with Rock's (1957;Rock & Heimer, 1959;Rock & Steinfield, 1963) and Clark, Lansford, & Dallenbach's (1960) findings. No differences were found between the one-trial learning group (DOC) and the standard repetition control group (C I).…”

supporting

confidence: 82%

“…This is interpreted as support for an incremental learning theory as opposed to a one-trial learning theory such as that proposed by Rock(1957;Rock & Heimer, 1959). …”

mentioning

confidence: 70%

“…The results of the present investigation suggest, however, that the apparent size of a familiar object is detennined by both visual and assumptive infonnation, and that their relative effects depend upon the viewing conditions and upon the representativeness of the object. In aseries of studies of paired-associate (PA) learning, Rock (l957;Rock& Heimer, 1959;Rock & Steinfield, 1963) reported data which were interpreted as supporting a one-trial learning hypothesis as opposed to an incrernental learning hypothesis. In Rock's paradigm, the experimental group learned a list of PA items.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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On Rock’s one-trial learning controversy

Breckenridge

Kooker

1969

Psychon Sci

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supporting

confidence: 82%

“…This is interpreted as support for an incremental learning theory as opposed to a one-trial learning theory such as that proposed by Rock(1957;Rock & Heimer, 1959). …”

mentioning

confidence: 70%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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On Rock’s one-trial learning controversy

Breckenridge

Kooker

1969

Psychon Sci

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“…And, by discovering that the mean number of trials necessary to obtain one errorless trial did not differ across groups, Rock reasoned that the control subjects must not have benefited from the repetition of pairs in the initial formation of the necessary associations. Despite an often cited criticism that Rock's conclusions were confounded by the possibility that replacement of only missed (and presumably more difficult) associations provided subjects an opportunity to select easier tobe-learned items (see, e.g., Underwood, Rehula, & Keppel, 1962), several subsequent studies have nevertheless controlled for this potential confounding and in the process have confirmed Rock's conclusions (Clark, Lanceford, & Dallenbach, 1960;Estes, Hopkins, & Crothers, 1960;Rock & Heimer, 1959). For example, in a study that supported Rock's conclusion with a free-recall task, Murdock and Babick (1961) used a similar paradigm that avoided confounding due to item difficulty.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Output and retrieval interference in the missing-number task

1992

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Three experiments are reported that represent a reexamination of the missing-number method (Buschke, 1963b) of estimating short-term memory span. The missing-number task involved presenting a random sequence of all but one of the numbers of a known reference set and asking subjects to identify the missing number. Experiment 1 introduced a modified missing-number task that included two missing items and two choices made by the subject. With a large decline in performance for the second choice relative to the first, it is possible that only the second choice was subject to output or retrieval interference. An alternative explanation is that subjects output the number with the weakest memory representation as their first response. By postcuing subjects to report their two choices in a forward or backward sequence, Experiment 2 provided evidence against the importance of output interference and support either for the importance of retrieval interference or for the "weakest-first" hypothesis. However, with a paradigm that replaced only correctly identified missing numbers, a prediction that subjects would select the number with the weakest memory representation as their first response was not confirmed in Experiment 3. Instead, retrieval interference was implicated to explain the first-choice superiority found in Experiments 1 and 3. The results were interpreted in terms of the TODAM model of Murdock (1982Murdock ( , 1987).Researchers generally agree that the amount of information that one can retrieve in a memory span task is satisfactorily estimated by Miller's (1956) seven plus or minus two "chunks." For example, when a "chunk" consisted of words adjacent in both presentation andrecall, Tulving and Patkau (1962) found that subjects were not able to utilize more than seven "adopted chunks" at a time. More recently, Ericsson (1985) found that without the use of long-term memory processes for encoding and retrieval, digit spans paralleled Miller's finding of about seven items. Despite a digit span that reached trained levels of 84 for 1 subject, when "meaningful encodings" (e.g., in terms of running times, dates, or years) were prevented by increases in presentation rate, or by the use of letters rather than numbers, his span dropped to the traditional size of about seven items.

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“…The usual assumption (again implicitly held, from the omission of any discussion of tests playing a role) was that the study of events increased their trace strength (Underwood & Kepple, 1962), or sometimes the number of traces (Bernbach, 1970). An even more radical view was promulgated some 50 years ago by Rock (1957;Rock & Heimer, 1959) and by Estes (1960;Estes, Hopkins, & Crothers, 1960). They suggested that even during study trials, only a few items transition from an unlearned state to a learned state, and that the smooth learning curve is essentially an averaging artifact.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The “pure-study” learning curve: The learning curve without cumulative testing

Roediger

Smith

2012

Mem Cogn

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The customary assumption in the study of human learning using alternating study and test trials is that learning occurs during study trials and that test trials are useful only to measure learning. In fact, tests seem to play little role in the development of learning, because the learning curve is similar even when the number of test trials varies widely (Tulving, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 6:175-184, 1967). However, this outcome seems odd, because other research has shown that testing fosters greater long-term learning than does studying. We report three experiments addressing whether tests affect the shape of the learning curve. In two of the experiments, we examined this issue by varying the number of spaced study trials in a sequence and examining performance on only a single test trial at the end of the series (a "pure-study" learning curve). We compared these pure-study learning curves to standard learning curves and found that the standard curves increase more rapidly and reach a higher level in both free recall (Exp. 1) and paired-associate learning (Exp. 2). In Experiment 3, we provided additional study trials in the "pure-study" condition to determine whether the standard (study-test) condition would prove superior to a study-study condition. The standard condition still produced better retention on both immediate and delayed tests. Our experiments show that test trials play an important role in the development of learning using both free-recall (Exps. 1 and 3) and pairedassociate (Exp. 2) procedures. Theories of learning have emphasized processes that occur during study, but our results show that processes engaged during tests are also critical.Keywords Learning . Memory . Testing effect . Recall During the 20th century, learning was perhaps the central focus of experimental psychology, with experiments performed on rats, mice, cats, pigeons, dogs, monkeys, and humans (among other creatures). In the study of human learning, researchers beginning with Ebbinghaus (1885/1964) used various arrangements of multiple study-test procedures with lists of nonwords or words. One common procedure used to study learning within this tradition-the study-test method-is the focus of this article. In the study-test procedure, subjects first study a set of material and are tested on it, then they study it again (either in the same order or in a new, random order) and take a second test, and so on, for as many trials as desired (or, sometimes, until the subjects reach a specified criterion). The resulting function relating the number of learning trials (on the abscissa) to performance on some dependent measure (on the ordinate) is the learning curve. For most tasks, the learning curve is negatively accelerated, although debate exists as to the function that best fits and whether the various functions fit because of averaging artifacts (e.g., Heathcote, Brown, & Mewhort, 2000;Mazur & Hastie, 1978). Exponential and power functions are the primary contenders for such curves, but the essential ...

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Further Evidence of One-Trial Associative Learning

Cited by 50 publications

References 0 publications

On Rock’s one-trial learning controversy

On Rock’s one-trial learning controversy

Output and retrieval interference in the missing-number task

The “pure-study” learning curve: The learning curve without cumulative testing

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