Amount of pretraining as a factor in stimulus predifferentiation and performance set.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of 3 amounts of verbal pretraining upon performance of a perceptual-motor task. In the motor task provided by the Star Discrimeter subjects (Ss) learned to move a wobble stick into channels corresponding to 6 colored lights consisting of red-yellow hues. Three groups of 20 women received either 2, 4, or 12 blocks of relevant pretraining in which they learned to associate a letter with each of the 6 colors. Three irrelevant pretraining groups were given corresponding amounts of practice in associating letters with a blue-green series of colors. An additional group had no pretraining prior to the motor task. All Ss were given 40 trials on the Star Discrimeter. The performance measures were correct responses and total errors per 20-sec. trial. The predictions made and the results obtained were as follows: (1) the data supported the prediction that all 3 amounts of relevant pretraining would result in positive transfer to the motor task. The performance of the combined relevant groups was reliably superior to that of the combined irrelevant groups. This facilitation was attributed to decreased generalization among the stimuli of the motor task. (2) The prediction that amount of facilitation resulting from stimulus predifferentiation would increase with increasing amounts of pretraining was not verified. (3) The prediction that irrelevant pretraining would facilitate motor performance was not verified.