Response training in young children’s discrimination shift learning

Abstract

A passive responding procedure, pointing at the correct stimulus, was used to determine whether preschool children would test hypotheses from the relevant attribute in a discrimination shift task. Some children were administered the initial task in the usual manner, with positive or negative feedback. About half of these children did not reach criterion. Other children were told which stimulus to point at. These children were then given positive feedback, but were not told why the response was correct. All children then received a reversal or a nonreversal shift. The children who were told which stimulus to choose learned both shifts in the same manner that the children who attained criterion on their own did. The children who did not attain criterion, who failed to learn, performed on a nonreversal shift like the learners did on the reversal (the nonlearners’ reversal performance was like the learners’ nonreversal performance). The results show that a simple directed response can limit the sample of hypotheses that young children test in discrimination learning even when the purpose of the response is ambiguous.