Learning Items Research Articles

絵と語の意図および偶発学習

The purpose of this study was to assess differential effects of pictures and words as stimulus materials on both intentional learning with rehearsal and unrehearsed incidental learning. Subjects were given a list of 15 picture-word pairs consisting of either animals or things, and were instructed to learn the pictures or words of the pairs. Pictures or words which they were not instructed to learn were assumed to be incidental learning items. The results indicated the superiority of pictures over words in both intentional and incidental learning irrespective of presentation rate (1sec vs. 4sec).

Situational Frequency as a Cue for Differentiating Items within Conceptual Categories

This experiment demonstrated that people can utilize relative situational frequency of occurrence to differentiate similarly categorizable target items in paired-associate learning. Subjects learned nine-pair lists in which the stimuli were three instances of each of three concepts and the responses were unrelated adjectives. Frequency of presentation on any given trial varied either within categories or between categories. Variation within categories facilitated learning.

Translations as Interpair Right and Wrong Items in Double-Function Verbal Discrimination Learning

60 subjects learned one of five verbal discrimination lists, a Spanish single-function, an English single-function, a mixed double-function, a Spanish double-function, or an English double-function. The results indicated superior performance on the single-function lists, intermediate performance with the mixed list, and poor performance on the two double-function lists. The results indicated that translations are of intermediate similarity when used as interpair right and wrong items in verbal discrimination learning.

Differential processing of bilingual right and wrong items in multiple-item recognition learning.

Differential processing of bilingual right and wrong items in multiple-item recognition learning.

Differential processing of bilingual right and wrong items in multiple-item recognition learning.

Differential processing of bilingual right and wrong items in multiple-item recognition learning.

A Test of the Associative Chaining Hypothesis by Serial-Recall and Serial-Anticipation Procedures

Summary A test of the associative chaining hypothesis was performed with the use of the serial-recall and the serial-anticipation procedures. Ss were 120 male and female freshman college students. A task involving transfer from a serial to a paired-associate list was used to test the associative chaining hypothesis. Half the pairs in the paired-associate list were made of successively learned items from the serial list (experimental pairs), and half were new pairs (control pairs). Method of presentation, recall, or anticipation was varied factorially for both the serial and the paired-associate lists. Support for the associative chaining hypothesis (faster learning of experimental than control pairs) was obtained only when the serial list was learned by the recall procedure (p < .005). Faster learning of both experimental and control pairs was observed when the paired-associate list was learned by recall as compared to anticipation (p < .005). The results support the hypothesis that the functional stimulu...

Schematic exemplars as items in multiple-item recognition learning

Schematically related dot patterns (i.e., distortions of a common prototype) were employed as either the right items or the wrong items of a multiple-item recognition learning task. Relative to a control list containing unrelated items, the presence of related right items yielded facilitated performance, but only early in practice. By contrast, the presence of related wrong items yielded an inhibitory effect early in practice. The results suggested that shared features are more likely to be extracted from the information present in right items than from the information present in wrong items.

Effects of presentation order on learning in multitrial free recall

By an organization view, the formation of clusters and consequently the progress of interactive free-recall learning should be affected by the order in which items are presented. The first experiment failed to support an accretion hypothesis, which predicted that presenting the learned items in each cluster before the unlearned items should expedite learning relative to the reverse order. The second experiment showed that even scrambling some clusters while preserving others had relatively little effect, and the effects that were obtained were directly contrary to what had been expected. These results plus other recent related findings suggest that the characteristics of list presentation may have surprisingly little effect on the progress of multitrial free-recall learning.

Consolidation in human memory: Retrograde amnestic effects of confusable items in paired-associate learning

Keeping the total set of presented pairs constant, the position of occurrence of potentially interfering pairs relative to “critical” pairs was varied. A critical pair is remembered less well if interfering material follows it closely than if the interfering material is postponed. As the interval between a critical pair and interfering material is increased, long-term retention of the critical item improves. Comparable variations in the position of interfering material before a critical item do not affect its retention. These results suggest the existence of a post-exposure consolidation process, and are inconsistent with certain kinds of discrimination and coding theories of paired-associate learning.

The Effects of Delay, Type, and Duration of Feedback on Verbal-Discrimination Learning

Verbal-discrimination learning was significantly faster when subjects were shown the correct member of the pair (feedback type A) than when shown the spatial position of the correct member (type B). A delay of feedback significantly impaired the rate of learning, whereas an increase in the duration of feedback led to faster learning. Also, delay and type of feedback interacted: the detrimental effects of delay occurred only with feedback B. The results are discussed with reference to comparable paired-associates studies, and interpreted in terms of frequency theory. There have been a number of investigations on the temporal intervals involved in the presentation of individual items in paired-associate learning by the anticipation procedure. According to Ward and Baumeister (1971), at least four such intervals may be distinguished. The durations of exposure for the stimulus and the stimulus-response feedback constitute the 'stimulus interval' and the 'feedback interval' respectively. The delays between the stimulus and the feedback and between the feedback for one item and stimulus exposure for the following item may be referred to as the 'feedback-delay interval' and the 'interitem interval.' The anticipation procedure used in most verbal-discrimination learning also fits this general model. The stimuli, a pair of verbal units, are presented to the subject, who is then given feedback, generally an exposure of the correct unit. He is asked to select one of the units during the 'stimulus interval' and is later informed of the correct choice during a 'feedback interval.' Before turning to the similarities and dissimilarities of paired-associate and verbal-discrimination learning, however, let us first review the literature on paired-associate learning in terms of the two feedback intervals Ward and Baumeister outline: that having to do with the delay between stimulus and feedback and that having to do with the duration of the feedback itself.

Priority of Recall of Old Items in Free-Recall Learning of Preschool Children

Summary The experiment reported in this study demonstrated that, when serialposition bias is controlled, preschool children, unlike adults, do not display priority of recall of new items in free-recall learning (FRL). Rather, children of this age respond with a priority of recall of old items, new items being given later in the recall sequence than previously given items. This finding, coupled with that of Battig and Slaybaugh (2), suggests that, in the case of new item learning, FRL of preschool children is subject to the strength principle, whereas FRL of adults is more influenced by strategy use.

Homographs as double function items in verbal discrimination learning.

Homographs as double function items in verbal discrimination learning.

Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 479 as to what the Arabs knew or what they thought. Bayard Dodge's careful, somewhat literal translation now puts this wealth of information af the fingertips of the nonArabist . The extensive notes and indices provided should help in securing this work its well-deserved place on the reference shelf of the historian of philosophy, allowing him to replace the too often heard banalities about the "passage of philosophy into Europe" with trenchant specifics based upon primary research. LENN EVAN GOODMAN University of Hawaii Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame o[ Time. By Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha yon Dechend. (Boston: Gambit Press, 1969. Pp. xxv+ 505. $10.00) The authors, both seasoned historians of science, have concocted a book that reads like Velikovsky bouncing along the Road to Xanadu. Their thesis is that certain archaic societies in the Far East, Middle East and South America possessed a profound knowledge of the kinematics, if not the dynamics, of astronomy, and that this knowledge, entailing "prodigious feats of concentration and computing," was encoded in their respective mythologies. "The gods are really stars . . .; all the stories, characters and adventures narrated by mythology concentrate on the active powers among the stars, who are the planets . . ."; Hephaistos trapping Aphrodite and Ares in a net refers to "a conjunction of Mars and Venus . . . in the Pleiades"; Phaeton's scorching trip represents a planetary deviation, "a destruction, occurring at long intervals, of things On earth by a great conflagration." Max Mtiller and George Cox in the last century and Leo Frobenius in this held similar views on the correspondence between mythic narratives and celestiaI phenomena; Marcel Griaule's more recent work among the Dogon and Dr. yon Dechend's own study of Polynesian myths are cited here to show that present-day preliterate societies--in the manner of "our great scientific ancestors"--are also disguising esoteric cosmogonies under innocent stories of gods and heroes. This archaic astronomical monomyth, diffused from China to Peru, no longer exists in its pristine integrity but has to be painfully teased out of the flotsam and jetsam that surfaces sporadically in chronicles, epics and latter-day literary myths, and it is to this task that the authors address themselves. The result is unconvincing. Erudite references are heaped together with too little attention to designing a credible argument; tenuous associations are passed off as sensational and indubitable proofs: there is much sleight-of-hand with etymologies; passages in epics are eccentrically explicated to yield the desired interpretation. Though Jung might well have sponsored this enterprise, the authors sneer at both brands of depth psychology. Nor do fellow mythologists fare much better: Dum6zil, L6vi-Strauss and Joseph Campbell are not so much as mentioned, and Cassirer is dismissed in a few ill-natured paragraphs. But what is most exasperating about the book is the authors' coy way of paying out their findings. Just as a train of argument is about to come to the point, a digression is maddeningly introduced to heighten the suspense; the startling promises of topic sentences and paragraphs somehow never get realized in the tangle of forced facts and dubious speculations that follow. To be sure, the book is full of fascinating items of learning and now and then an arresting idea emerges, but these tidbits hardly compensate for the frailty of the thesis and the overly calculated exposition. ALBERT B. FRIEDMAN Claremont Graduate School ...

Imagery and meaningfulness of right and wrong items in verbal discrimination learning

The effects of variations in the rated imagery (I) and the meaningfulness (m) of the right word (R) and the wrong word (W) on a verbal discrimination (VD) task were examined by factorial manipulations of the I and m values of the R and W words within VD pairs. Results indicated that I was a more potent variable than m in the VD task.

Mathematical model of memory trace and forgetfulness.

A mathematical model of a memory trace and forgetfulness is proposed here based on an improved version of our previous work (Harth et al., 1970; Anninos et al., 1970). Thus it was shown that the trace of a stimulus pattern presented to a subject decays with time due to the interference theory which assumes that competition among different associations leads to losses of retention. Such interference theory has been tested in this model by assuming that the retention of a first learned item followed by the learning of other successive tasks, depends on the inhibitory effect induced by them on the first item.

Presentation of correct and incorrect items in verbal discrimination learning.

Presentation of correct and incorrect items in verbal discrimination learning.

Photographs, drawings, and nouns as stimuli in paired-associate learning

Color photographs and simple line drawings were compared with corresponding concrete nouns as stimulus items in paired-associate learning. Greater recall was found with pictorial stimuli, but a predicted difference between photographs and drawings was not significant. The two types of pictorial stimuli did differ, however, in proportion of intralist intrusion errors and in reported use of mediation. Both surpassed word stimuli whether rote learning or a mnemonic strategy was reported. These results do not support theories that attribute picture superiority to incidental cues or to implicit mediational strategies.

ORGANIZATION OF SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING OF THE FUTURE FOREIGN LANGUAGES TEACHERS POWERED BY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

The article is dedicated to the circumstances of usage of self-directed learning as individual learning item in process of subject training of the future foreign languages teachers. The methods of improvement of effectiveness of self-directed learning are determined. The proportion of class hours and self-directed learning in the cycle of vocational training of the future foreign languages teachers are represented; the results of experimental studies of attitude of students towards the self-directed learning are described as well as the planes of forming of students’ skills to its realization are determined.

Serial structures as response items in paired-associate learning

In three different experiments, 16 names were paired with four response items which represented a serial structure. The items were “HS diploma,” “B.A.,” “M. A.,” and “Ph.D.” for Experiment 1; “city,” “county,” “state,” and “country” for Experiment 2; and “city,” “county,” “country,” and “continent” for Experiment 3. Results for each experiment showed that the end items were learned faster in terms of trials to a criterion and errors before criterion. Forward association errors were highly related to corresponding backward association errors for Experiments 2 and 3. In the same two experiments errors involving “county” and “country” were markedly different, which was interpreted as further evidence of the effect of a previously learned serial structure upon paired-associate learning.

Word frequency and selection strategies in verbal-discrimination learning

Selection strategies for enhancing or hindering the establishment of functional stimuli related to the consistent selection of intrapair right items in verbal-discrimination learning were investigated by means of various transfer conditions. Specific item content of the two lists was unrelated. However, a strategy activated during List 1 practice that was based on the pre-experimental word-frequency attributes of wrong and right items in the list was found to transfer to performance on List 2.