Effect of first-order conditional probability in a two-choice learning situation.
Norman Henry Anderson · Journal of Experimental Psychology · 1960
The experiments reported here investigate behavior in a two-choice probabilistic task in which the independent variable is the conditional probability in the sequence of stimulus events. Each of the two stimulus events (lights) was required to occur equally often, but a partial patterning was introduced by varying the firstorder conditional probability in the sequence of lights. This variable, denoted by TTH, is denned as the probability of occurrence of Light 1 on any trial, given that Light 1 occurred the previous trial. When Tii .5, each light tends to repeat itself. Thus, TTII = .7 represents a 70% repetition pattern, and im = .3 repre-