Children's two-choice learning of predominantly alternating and repeating sequences

Abstract

Sixty-four nursery Ss and 64 kindergarten Ss guessed which of two lights would come on for 100 acquisition and 100 transfer trials. There were four groups in acquisition, differing in repetition probability ( π 1) level (.1 or .9) and age. For transfer, π 1 was reversed for half the Ss in each acquisition group, resulting in four groups at each age level (nonreversed .1-.1, non-reversed .9-.9, reversed .1-.9, and reversed .9-.1). Both nursery and kindergarten Ss exhibited dominant response tendencies; the nursery Ss had a tendency to repeat their response, while the kindergarten Ss had a tendency to alternate theirs. The nursery Ss' responses were more dependent upon the event sequence than previous findings have indicated. While both age groups were able to follow the highly predictable event sequence, the kindergarten Ss followed both the repeating and alternating patterns better than the nursery Ss. For all Ss, a repeating sequence was easier to follow than an alternating one. Response tendencies established during acquisition were extremely resistant to change; except for the .1-.9 kindergarten group, the effect of previous experience was not overcome in the 100 transfer trials. It was suggested that the kindergarten Ss performed better than the nursery Ss because they were superior to the nursery Ss in response inhibition. Since a repeating response tendency requires fewer inhibitory responses than an alternating one, it was further suggested that a dominant response tendency is an indicator of the level of response complexity a child can handle when processing information.