Stimulus meaning in stimulus predifferentiation.

Nature of discriminating and categorizing functions of verbal labels on recognition memory for shape.

“…In contrast, the effect of the two functions of the irrelevant label was inferior to that of the relevant label. This finding supports the view (Pfafflin, 1960) that an irrelevant label facilitates stimulus predifferentiation only by forcing subjects to examine the shapes carefully. In the case of irrelevant labeling, there was no close relationship between shape recognition and label recall.…”

“…It has been shown that learning to associate distinctive and representative verbal labels with shape stimuli facilitates subsequent recognition memory for the shapes (Ellis, 1968;Feuge & Ellis, 1969;Nagae, 1977Nagae, , 1978Pfafflin, 1960). This finding has been interpreted in two ways.…”

“…It is assumed that relevant labels for stimuli suggest appropriate categories and make it easier for subjects to discriminate whatever distinctive features the stimuli have. In contrast, irrelevant labels would not have this effect and would contribute to stimulus predifferentiation only by forcing subjects to observe the stimuli carefully (Pfafflin, 1960). Two types of shapes were employed as distractors.…”

The Relation of Question Difficulty to Question Form

“…Pfafflin (6) found that the more meaningful the question, the smaller the number of e r r o r s learned. Her stimuli were pictures with three degrees of meaningfulness which were to be matched with both relevant and irrelevant labels.…”

Effects of labeling and articulation on the attainment of concrete, abstract, and number concepts.

“…In addition, the well-known studies (e.g., Ellis, Bessemer, Devine, & Trafton, 1962) related to acquired equivalence of cues and acquired distinctiveness of cues indicate that learning different labels to stimuli will make the stimuli functionally distinctive and that learning the same label to these stimuli will make them functionally similar. Relevant labels, that is, labels with characteristics similar to the defining qualities of the concept, result in enhanced discrimination of appropriate cues, especially where stimuli are low in meaningfulness (Pfafflin, 1960;Ranken, 1963). Where labeling is not coordinate with the transfer task, pretraining with labels for selected stimulus 1 The research reported in this paper was supported in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA Order No.…”