Studies of coding in verbal learning.
Benton J. Underwood, Adrienne Erlebacher · The Psychological Monographs · 1965
Six experiments are reported in which free learning (FL) and paired- associate learning (PAL) were examined with respect to the effects of coding of verbal units on learning. In 2 FL experiments and 1 PAL experiment where response terms were manipulated, encoding of trigrams to words produced a more meaningful unit. Such encoding was shown to influence learning positively only if decoding was simple. Encoding of a stimulus term to a word was also shown to influence learning positively, but such encoding did not occur unless the possibilities were easily perceived. Finally, an experiment demonstrated sound coding of response terms, but the positive effect on transfer was small and limited to unmixed lists. We concluded that coding systems: (a) may influence learning positively if decoding is simple; (b) will produce only a small positive effect even under favorable conditions; (c) may have no positive effect even if used and may, under certain conditions, inhibit learning. (Author)