añadió: -Las 3 letras: I, V y U significan Impuesto sobre Ventas y Uso

Beginning in the late 1920s, some researchers began to apply behaviorist principles to a uniquely human behavior: language. Such verbal learning research continued throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century (especially from the 1930s through the 1960s and early 1970s) and yielded many insights into the nature of human learning.

Central to verbal learning research were two learning tasks, serial learning and paired- associate learning, that could easily be analyzed in terms of an S–R perspective. Serial learning involves learning a set of items in a particular sequence; the alphabet, the days of the week, and the planets in our solar system are examples. Verbal learning theorists explained serial learning in this way: The first item in the list is a stimulus to which the second item is learned as a response, the second item then serves as a stimulus to which the third item is the learned response, and so on.

Paired-associate learning involves learning pairs of items. Two common examples are learn- ing foreign language vocabulary words and their English equivalents (e.g., le papier is French for

“the paper”) and learning capital cities of states or countries (e.g., the capital of Alaska is Juneau). Verbal learning theorists described paired associates as being distinct stimulus–response associa- tions: The first item in each pair is the stimulus; the second item is the response.

Increasingly, verbal learning studies yielded results that couldn’t be easily explained in terms of simple S–R connections, and theorists began to introduce a variety of mental phenomena into their discussions of learning processes. In this section, I’ll describe several general learning prin- ciples that emerged from verbal learning research. Some of the findings are relatively easy to explain from a behaviorist perspective, but others are hard to explain unless we bring cognition into the picture:

◆ _{Serial learning is characterized by a particular pattern . A serial learning curve is usually}

observed in serial learning tasks: People learn the first few items and last few items more quickly and easily than they learn the middle items (J. F. Hall, 1971; McCrary & Hunter, 1953; Roediger & Crowder, 1976). If we were to graph the speed with which the various items in a serial list are learned, we might obtain results similar to what you see in Figure 7.8 . A common example is the way in which most children learn the alphabet: They learn the first letters (A, B, C, D) and the last

letters (X, Y, Z ) before they learn the middle letters (e.g., J, K, L, M) .

The tendency for the first items in a serial learning curve to be learned and remembered easily is called the primacy effect . The tendency for the last items to be learned and remembered easily is called the recency effect . Verbal learning theorists explained both effects by proposing

that the end points of the list (i.e., the first and last items) served as anchors to which the other

items could then be attached in a stimulus–response fashion.

◆ _{Overlearned material is more easily recalled at a later time . What happens when you learn}

information perfectly and then continue to study it? This process of overlearning , in which you learn material to mastery and then practice it for additional study trials, enables you to remem- ber the information more accurately at a later time (Krueger, 1929; Underwood, 1954). As you may recall from Chapter 3 , practice is important for learning, presumably because it strengthens stimulus–response connections.

◆ Distributed practice is usually more effective than massed practice . Imagine that you have to

study for a test and estimate that you need six hours to master the test material. Would you do better on the test if you studied for six hours all at once or if you divided your study time into smaller chunks—say, six one-hour sessions? Verbal learning researchers discovered that distrib-

uted practice , spreading study time out over several occasions, usually leads to better learning than massed practice , in which study time occurs all at once (A. Glenberg, 1976; Underwood, 1961; Underwood, Kapelak, & Malmi, 1976). In fact, the further apart the study sessions are, the better one’s recall for the studied information is apt to be over the long run (Rohrer & Pashler, 2007). From a behaviorist perspective, massed practice might eventually lead to fatigue, which would cause the learner to begin practicing inappropriate responses.

◆ _{Learning in one situation often affects learning and recall in another situation . Imagine that}

you have to learn two sets of paired associates, as follows:

Figure 7.8

A typical serial learning curve

Speed of Learning Fast Slow First Last Order of Items Set 1 Set 2 house–dragon house–paper plant–sled plant–clock lamp–music lamp–turkey onion–pillow onion–chair

After you’ve first learned Set 1 and then learned Set 2, you’re asked to recall the responses to each of the stimulus words in Set 1. Would you have difficulty? Probably so, because you learned dif- ferent responses to those same words when you learned Set 2. You’d have an easier time remem- bering the correct responses you learned in Set 1 if you hadn’t also had to learn the Set 2 responses.

When people learn two sets of paired associates in succession, their learning of the second set often diminishes their ability to recall the first set—a phenomenon known as retroactive

inhibition . In fact, individuals in this situation often have difficulty remembering the second set as well—a phenomenon known as proactive inhibition . The tendency for a set of paired associ- ates learned at one time to interfere with the recall of a set learned either earlier or later is espe- cially likely to occur when the two sets have the same or similar stimulus words but different response words ( J. F. Hall, 1971; Osgood, 1949).

Under different circumstances, learning one set of information may actually improve the recall of information learned at another time—a phenomenon that verbal learning theorists called either retroactive facilitation or proactive facilitation , depending on the order in which the two sets of information were learned ( J. F. Hall, 1971). Facilitation is most likely to occur when two situations have similar or identical stimuli and have similar responses as well (Osgood, 1949). As an example, after learning the stimulus–response pair “house–dragon,” you would probably learn “house–monster” fairly easily.

Verbal learning theorists proposed that retroactive and proactive inhibition were major fac- tors in forgetting verbal information (e.g., McGeoch, 1942; Melton & Irwin, 1940; Underwood,

1948). Thus, these theorists were among the first to discuss theoretical ideas related to memory .

Many contemporary cognitive psychologists also suggest that inhibition plays a significant role in memory and forgetting (see Chapter 11 ).

◆ _{Characteristics of the material affect the speed with which people can learn it . Verbal learning}

researchers identified a number of characteristics that affect the ease of learning and remember- ing verbal material:

1. Items are more quickly learned when they’re meaningful —that is, when they can be

easily associated with other ideas (Cofer, 1971; Paivio, 1971). German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1913) stumbled on this principle well before the verbal learning movement was off and running in the Western hemisphere. Serving as his own subject of study in a number of serial learning tasks, Ebbinghaus found that some words triggered associations that helped him remember the words more easily. He tried to eliminate the influence of associations by using presumably meaningless nonsense syllables (“words” such as JAD, MON, and ZIV). Yet even many nonsense syllables often have meaningfulness and evoke associations, thus making them rela- tively easy to learn ( J. F. Hall, 1971). For example, the nonsense syllable JAD might make you think of “jade,” and the syllable MON might remind you of “money.” 2. Items are easier to learn and remember when they’re pronounceable (Di Vesta &

Ingersoll, 1969; Underwood & Schulz, 1960). For example, the nonsense syllable DNK should be learned faster than BPX because most people can pronounce DNK more easily.

3. Concrete items are easier to learn and remember than abstract items (Gorman, 1961;

Paivio, 1963). For example, items such as turtle, hammer , and sandwich should be

remembered more easily than items such as truth, joy , and experience .

4. One probable reason that the concreteness of items makes them easier to learn and remember is that concrete items can be mentally visualized . In general, items that

readily evoke mental images (e.g., turtle) are more memorable than those that are hard

to visualize (e.g., truth) (Paivio, 1971). This phenomenon of visual imagery—very

◆ _{People often impose meaning on new information . The effect of meaningfulness noted in the}

preceding bullet can be explained from an S–R perspective: When a stimulus word has many other words associated with it, one of those associations might in turn be associated with the response to be learned. More troublesome for an S–R approach is the fact that people will go out of their way to make information meaningful when trying to learn it. For example, when Bugelski (1962) asked

adults to learn paired associates involving nonsense syllables, they almost invariably reported that they imposed meanings to help them learn the pairs. To illustrate, when given this pair:

DUP–TEZ

one person used the word deputize to help form the connection. Cognitive theories have emerged

that probably better explain this tendency for human beings to search for meaning.

◆ People organize what they learn . When people are allowed to recall items of a serial learn-

ing task in whatever order they prefer—a task known as free recall —they typically don’t recall

the items in the original presentation order. Instead, their recall order often reflects an organiza- tional scheme of some kind (Bousfield, 1953; Buschke, 1977; Jenkins & Russell, 1952). For instance, in a classic experiment by Bousfield (1953), college students were given a list of 60 words, 15 from each of four categories: animals, names, vegetables, and professions. Although the words were presented in a random order, the students tended to recall them in category clusters. For example, a typical recall order might have been something like this:

camel, giraffe, zebra, donkey, Jason, Adam, Howard, pumpkin, cabbage, carrot, lettuce, radish, milkman, baker, dentist

People even try to organize seemingly unorganized material (Tulving, 1962). This tendency of human beings to organize what they learn is difficult to explain using behaviorist principles. As you’ll see in later chapters, however, it lends itself quite easily to an explanation based on cogni- tive learning theories.

◆ _{People often use encoding strategies to help them learn . As the earlier example of remembering} DUP–TEZ as “deputize” illustrates, people often change, or encode , information in some way to

table cushion hungry ice cream chair tree trope luxe eat hod rocking green candy cookie forest leaf wood plant drink pizza luxury cake hood diet sit fat

Some items are more meaning- ful than others.

make it easier to learn (Bugelski, 1962; Dallett, 1964; Underwood & Erlebacher, 1965). Furthermore, when experimenters specifically tell people to use a certain encoding strategy to help them learn information, learning improves (Bugelski, Kidd, & Segmen, 1968; J. F. Hall, 1971). For instance, when people are instructed in techniques for forming mental visual images, they’re able to remember a list of words more accurately than individuals who haven’t been given such instructions (Bugelski et al., 1968).

◆ _{People are more likely to learn general ideas than to learn words verbatim . In fact, when peo-}

ple focus on learning ideas rather than on learning information word for word, their learning is faster and their recall more accurate (Briggs & Reed, 1943; H. B. English, Welborn, & Killian, 1934; H. E. Jones & English, 1926). Most verbal learning research focused on the learning of verbatim information. In doing so, it may very well have ignored the way in which human beings actually learn most verbal material.

Clearly, early verbal learning research gave us a number of useful learning principles. It also gave us two learning tasks—serial and paired-associate learning—that continue to be used in learn- ing research. At the same time, in trying to stretch S–R models of learning to explain human verbal behavior, verbal learning research gradually uncovered weaknesses of the behaviorist perspective.

In more recent decades, the focus of much language-based learning research has been on how people learn meaningful verbal material (e.g., prose passages) rather than artificially con- structed serial lists or paired associates. In fact, as researchers increasingly embraced cognitivist ideas in the latter part of the twentieth century, many of them abandoned the term verbal learning

in favor of more obviously mental terminology— memory , encoding , visual imagery , and so on. For

example, the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior —a widely read professional journal

when I was in graduate school—became the Journal of Memory and Language in 1985.