THE EFFECTS OF WORD-RELATEDNESS ON LEARNING.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS RESEARCH WAS TO EXAMINE THE EFFECTS OF SEVERAL MEASURES OF WORD-RELATEDNESS ON SEVERAL VERBAL LEARNING TASKS--PRIMARILY PAIRED-ASSOCIATES LEARNING AND VERBAL DISCRIMINATION LEARNING, WITH INCIDENTAL ATTENTION GIVEN TO FREE RECALL AND SEMANTIC GENERALIZATION. THE STRATEGY WAS TO SELECT A SAMPLE OF WORD PAIRS (240 COMMON NOUNS ARRANGED INTO 120 PAIRS TO REPRESENT A VARIETY OF JUDGED RELATIONSHIPS) AND THEN TO STUDY THESE PAIRS EXTENSIVELY IN A VARIETY OF EXPERIMENTAL TASK SITUATIONS. PAIRED-ASSOCIATES LEARNING AND VERBAL DISCRIMINATION LEARNING SCORES WERE DETERMINED IN TWO EXPERIMENTS. THE INTEREST WAS IN ACHIEVING A STABLE SCORE FOR EACH PAIR. TO DO THIS A GROUP STUDY-TEST PROCEDURE WAS DEVELOPED AND USED WITH APPROPRIATE MINOR CHANGES IN BOTH EXPERIMENTS. EACH PAIR APPEARED IN FIVE DIFFERENT 60-ITEM LISTS. EACH LIST WAS PRESENTED TO AN INDEPENDENT GROUP OF SUBJECTS FOR THREE TRIALS. THE LEARNING TASK SCORES WERE CORRELATED WITH ALL OF THE VARIABLES DESCRIBING ASPECTS OF THE STIMULUS MATERIAL. THE MAJOR INTEREST WAS IN COMPARING THE PATTERNS OF CORRELATION FOR THE TWO EXPERIMENTS. SEVERAL MAJOR DIFFERENCES WERE FOUND. PAIRED-ASSOCIATE PERFORMANCE CORRELATES SUBSTANTIALLY WITH THE MEASURES OF DIRECT ASSOCIATION WHILE VERBAL DISCRIMINATION PERFORMANCE CORRELATES NEAR ZERO. THE GENERAL CONCLUSION IS THAT PROPERTIES OF THE STIMULUS MATERIAL PLAY VERY DIFFERENT PARTS IN THE TWO TASKS. (AMM)