The responses involved in the rote learning of verbal materials

Abstract

It is hypothesized that rote learning, both intentional and incidental, takes place as a result of “pronouncing” responses made by S to the stimulus items. In this view, instructions to learn facilitate learning because they serve to increase the frequency of critical pronouncing responses made by S . This implies that, if incidental learners can be induced to make pronouncing responses at a high enough rate, they should learn as efficiently as intentional learners. Two orienting tasks were designed to produce pronouncing responses to different degrees: (a) pronouncing each item over and over ( HP ); and (b) guessing a number presumably associated with each item ( LP ). Two groups of 20 S s each, one intentional and one incidental, were tested with each task. It was predicted that: (a) intentional learning would show considerable superiority over incidental learning when the orienting task does not require a high rate of pronouncing responses ( LP ); and (b) there would be no significant difference when the orienting task requires both kinds of learners to make pronouncing responses at a very high rate of frequency ( HP ). That is, a significant interaction between instructions (intentional or incidental) and orienting task ( LP or HP ) was predicted. Instructions and orienting task were varied in a 2 × 2 factorial design. Both independent variables produced significant variation in the learning scores. In accordance with the critical theoretical prediction, the interaction between the main variables was also significant. These findings support a pronouncing-response hypothesis and appear to be independent of whether recall is measured immediately or after a 6-min retention interval.