A developmental study of attention to cue redundancy introduced following discrimination learning

Abstract

Following original learning (OL) of a two-choice simultaneous visual discrimination problem by second and sixth grade Ss, the cues of the elevant and irrelevant dimensions were made 100% redundant during a 40 trial overtraining (OT) period. A control group received 40 OT trials without the redundancy. The effects of the redundancy pairing were assessed by a subsequent learning problem in which the only relevant cues were those which had been irrelevant in OL. For half the experimental Ss the OL-irrelevant cue which had been paired with the OL-positive cue during overtraining was made positive, while for the other half the cue paired with the negative OL stimulus was made positive. The data indicated that the redundancy period resulted in both instrumental response strength to the OL irrelevant cues, and a response to the dimension represented by them. Relative transfor effects for the two grade levels supported the interpretation that during the redundancy phase the younger children attended to the previously irrelevant stimuli more, i.e., “focused” on OL relevant stimuli less, than was the case with the older children. In a second study identical procedures were followed except that the correct and incorrect stimuli were identified for the S before the OL period began. The results for second grade Ss suggested that there might be decreased dimensional responding to the previously irrelevant cues during OT under these OL-instructed conditions.