Two experiments on how symmetrical difficulty factors (word familiarity and concreteness) affect stages of associative learning are reported. Learning parameters reacted in a qualitatively similar manner to stimulus and response manipulations. Paired associate items are represented in memory as unitary traces rather than as separate stimulus and…

Previous research has investigated the effects of interpresentation lag within the context of experimenter-controlled lag values. The present study attempted to explore subject-controlled lag effects on paired-associate learning. (Editor)

Three experiments were conducted in which expectations of learning and transfer based on associative theory or frequency theory differed from those based on a theory of mental imagery. (Editor)

Examines the familiar serial to derived paired-associates transfer task in the light of expectations about the amount of positive transfer it should produce. Suggests, contrary to long-standing assumptions, that this paradigm cannot be expected to yield more than relatively moderate degrees of transfer because the utilization of response-produced…

In the present study an attempt was made to investigate the duality of encoding mechanisms via instructional sets that were independent of stimulus characteristics. (Author)

Research has indicated that interference produced by the sharing of sensory features of paired-associate stimulus words was not eliminated by processing the pairs at the meaning level. These experiments were intended to extend the range of conditions under which the sensory interference effect might persist, and to incorporate the findings within…

Sought to elucidate the nature of odor memory by applying paradigms from verbal learning and semantic memory and to investigate two processes affecting paired-associate performance. (Author/RK)

Two paired-associate (PA) learning studies observed the acquisition performance of 85 college students with either odors or abstract figures as stimuli and numbers as responses. (Editor)

Attempts to help specify the boundary conditions for use of the recognition-recall method, i.e., recall made conditional upon recognition, and to use this method to evaluate a hypothesis about stimulus-concreteness effects with low-meaningful responses. (Author/RK)

In a study of paired-associate learning and retention, the mode of presentation (pictures versus words) of the stimuli and the responses was varied factorially. Results pose difficulties for current interpretations of picture-word differences. (Editor/RK)

Tests two theoretical accounts of imagery on paired-associate learning. These two theories, differentiation theory and mediation theory, have been proposed to account for the finding that stimilus imagery/concreteness is an important variable in paired-associate learning. (Author/RK)

Tulving and others (Tulving, 1974; Tulving & Madigan, 1970) have distinguished two kinds of forgetting of verbal information: trace-dependent forgetting and cue-dependent forgetting. Attempts to determine which type occurs in retroactive inhibition of free-recall learning. (Author/RK)

Nelson, Brooks, and Wheeler (1975) found that interference effects produced by physical similarity among word stimuli in paired associates result from the disruption of contact with the functional stimulus and that interference with associative retrieval is minimal. Data in this research challenge their conclusion on several grounds. (Author/RK)

It was hypothesized that freedom to choose words to be learned, but not the actual choice of words per se, improves performance in paired-associate tasks. Subjects offered an attractive or meaningful choice performed significantly better than subjects offered an unattractive choice, which was equivalent to no choice at all. (Author/CP)

Five experiments were conducted comparing performance on paired-associate lists of stimuli that rhymed with lists of stimuli that did not rhyme. Results are discussed in terms of the role of input position cues in aiding discrimination among items. (Editor/RK)