Verbal and Concept Learning

Abstract

This chapter reviews the literature from approximately June 1964 to February 1967. Since the last two issues of the REVIEW devoted to Growth, Development, and Learning used an organization quite different from the current volume, it may be helpful to indicate those chapters which relate most closely to this review: McDonald (1964) on task and method variables and Briggs and Hamilton (1964) on practice and feedback variables. The authors of both chapters noted the need for a behavioral taxonomy. It would be most rewarding to report that educational researchers and psychologists now have a generally accepted taxonomy of learning tasks, but such is not the case. Since the last review of this topic, however, a significant step has been taken in this direction. Gagne's (1965) taxonomy is a hierarchy in which the most complex form of learning, problem solving, requires the learner to have mastered the appropriate subtasks in the next lower level, principle learning. Principle learning, in turn, requires mastery of relevant concepts. Thus, the more complex forms of learning are based on less complex forms all the way down to basic classical and operant conditioning. One important consequence of arranging all learning tasks in a hierarchical system is that failure to reach the criterion on a task implies that tasks above the failed task in the hierarchy will also be poorly learned. Stated somewhat differently, some portion of the variability in the performance in a group of learners may be attributed to the various amounts of success they have had in mastering the tasks prerequisite to the current task. Not all of the variability, however, is attributable to conditions within the learners. Some of it results from differences in the conditions existing within the learning environment. These conditions are encompassed by a host of independent variables that have been manipulated in laboratory experiments and classroom studies. The remainder of this review will discuss the studies related to these two main sources of