Verbal pretraining aided both single-problem discrimination and learning-set performance, while single-problem mastery manipulations had no significant effect. These results support the theory of acquired distinctiveness of cues. (MH)

Information theory was used to qualify the difficulty of verbal discrimination (VD) learning tasks and to measure VD performance. Words for VD items were selected with high background frequency and equal a priori probabilities of being selected as a first response. Three VD lists containing only 2-, 3-, or 4-word items were created and equated for…

Study to determine whether learning is a phenomenon of input processing, output processing, or both. (Author/DS)

A theory of comprehension in verification tasks is developed from a general conception of language comprehension. Models are developed for a task involving transfer verbs "borrow" and "loan" and the possession verb "have." Models and theoretical framework are superior in some respects to constituent comparison and conversion models. (CHK)

Subjects studied and were tested for recognition and recall of target words on lists of cue-target word pairs. List-cued recall was higher than non-cued recall, suggesting that recognition failure is independent of subjects' familiarity with task requirements. This contradicts attribution of encoding specificity phenomena to subjects' confusion.…

Subjects were given three trials to speak and to write as fast as they could both the alphabet and a set of two-digit numbers. The speed or oral responding was approximately 6 syllables per second for letters and 7 syllables per second for digits. The speed for writing was approximately 2 items per second for both digits and letters. Correlations…

Two-year old white boys from Low and High social class (SES) groups were presented with identical learning tasks under nonverbal and verbal conditions. Under the nonverbal condition there were no SES differences, but under the verbal condition the High SES group significantly improved their performance, and were superior to the Low SES group.…

The study was intended to determine the effect of the mode of verbalization of a discovered generalization on short-term retention of ability to use the generalization. Fifty preservice elementary teachers were assigned to one of the five verbalization methods: speaking, listening, writing, reading, or no verbalization. Each performed on six…

The position is confirmed that both types of information feedback improve retention, but the delayed information feedback method is more effective. From this study it can be postulated that feedback in general does improve performance. (Authors/CB)

Concludes that theoretical explanations derived from performance on one type of task may not generalize to describe performance on other related types of tasks. (RB)

An experiment was performed to test predictions based on a combination of the frequency theory of verbal discrimination learning and Taylor-Spence drive theory, the latter of which postulates a Drive Level x Task Complexity interaction. (Editor)

Experiment was concerned with the validity of the assumptions involved in the proposal of some minor modifications in the frequency theory of verbal-discrimination learning. (Author/CB)