The role of class-descriptive cues in paired-associates learning.

Abstract

It was postulated that the stimulus unit represented by subject in the associative paradigm can be usefully described as: (a) an "implicit" response to features of the stimulus object; (b) an event with stimulus properties; (c) a modifiable event rather than one that is fixed by the stimulus object. It was hypothesized that when the stimulus objects in a list of objects have class-descriptive features, these features may give rise to implicit responses which become a part of the associative-stimulus event. In this case the associative-stimulus event is said to be compounded of implicit responses to class-descriptive cues and item-descriptive cues. The utility of this conception of the stimulus unit was tested by comparing the rate of paired-associates learning for a given task under 2 different conditions of training. The paired-associates task was one for which learning was expected to be facilitated if combinations of implicit responses to class and item cues functioned as the stimulus events. Two training conditions were selected so that one would favor the formation of such compound stimulus events, the other would not. The training condition which favored the use of combinations of cues resulted in a reliably higher level of performance with a given amount of training.