Interrelationships of successive and simultaneous discrimination.

Abstract

An experiment was designed to test Spence''s three-level theory of discrimination learning, also Lawrence''s hypothesis of acquired distinctiveness of cues. Group I (16 rats) learned a simultaneous problem followed by a successive one, while Group II (16 rats) learned the problems in the opposite order. Each group was subdivided so as to provide two degrees of learning of its first problem. After retraining on the second problem and then on the first, all rats were tested for concurrent mastery of both problems. Successive was more difficult than simultaneous discrimination. There was positive transfer from simultaneous to successive discrimination, but some evidence of negative transfer in the opposite direction. Differences between criterion and overlearning groups were non-significant. In the final test, both types of discrimination problem were successfully performed. Concurrent mastery of both problems was explained as transverse patterning. In contrast with Spence''s "minimum level" hypothesis, the following multiordinal one was proposed, and appeared to account for most of the results: All orders of functional stimulus unit[long dash]elements, compounds, transverse patterns, etc.[long dash]concurrently acquire response tendencies.