The Stimulus in Serial Verbal Learning
Robert K. Young · The American Journal of Psychology · 1961
The functional stimulus in serial verbal learning has not been identified specifically. Thus, when a series of items, A-B-C-D-E, etc., is learned as a serial list, it is difficult to determine whether the functional stimulus giving rise to Item D is C, all preceding items, the serial position of the item, all of these factors, or some other aspect of the situation. In a previous study, a list of paired associates (PA-list) was presented S following learning of a serial (Sr) list.1 Relatively little positive transfer occurred in learning the PA-list although it was constructed from the items of the Sr-list, in a manner which can be symbolized as A-B, B-C, C-D, D-E, etc. Thus, just as in the Sr-list, each item except the first and the last served as both a stimulus and as a response, and the pairings were consistent with the ordering of the items in the Sr-list in which A is considered a stimulus for B, B for C, C for D, etc. (Of course, during learning by paired associates, the pairs were never presented in a consistent order but always in different random orders.) It would appear that if A is the specific and exclusive stimulus for B in the Sr-list, and if B is the stimulus for C, and so on, high positive transfer should obtain in the PA-learning since the A-B, B-C, C-D, etc., associations would have been learned in the Sr-list. As noted above, this is not the case. Furthermore, it is known that if this procedure is so reversed that S first learns a PA-list of the nature A-B, B-C, C-D, etc. (again randomly presented), and then learns an Sr-list in which the items are ordered A-B-C-D-E, etc., high positive transfer will occur.2 In learning by PA it would appear that the particular verbal unit used as the nominal stimulus must inevitably serve also as the functional stimulus; there seems to be no other cue which S can use.