Acquisition and Relearning of a Paired-Associate Task

One of the fundamental principles in the study of learning is the nature of the acquisition of new information. The learning of complex tasks is not instantaneous. Instead, several trials, or repetitions, are required before such a task is learned. If you have ever tried to remember the lines in a play, to memorize a musical composition, or to learn the names of all the bones and muscles in the body, you have no doubt experienced the gradual improvement that comes with practice. Ivan Pavlov's work with dogs and E. L. Thorndike's experimentation on trial-and-error learning also demonstrate the basic idea that learning is the result of practice. The following experiment in verbal learning demonstrates the nature of the acquisition process.

Experimental Procedure: Experiment 1

To do this experiment, you will need only a watch with a second hand.

STEP 1 Photocopy and then cut apart the answer sheets on pages 112-115 for trials 1 through 12. You will use these sheets to record your answers in a paired-associate learning task.

STEP 2 Look at the list of thirty word pairs presented below. Your task is to learn the association of the words in each pair so that when the first word is presented, you can fill in the second word in the pair. Study the list of word pairs any way you like for two minutes. At the end of two minutes, go to the answer sheet marked "Trial 1" and write in as many of the word associates as you can recall. Do not look back at the word list once you have started to recall.

 1. pencil - bat
2. earring - mouse
3. clock - fork
4. ball - cup
5. telephone - ruby
6. book - ear
7. flower - airplane
8. chair - knife
9. diamond - shirt
10. letter - window
11. scissors - cat
12. window - radio
13. tree - girl
14. picture - brick
15. horse - table
16.coat - glass
17. door - bus
18. key - rose
19. ruler - sugar
20. spoon - queen
21. card - fireplace
22. thumbtack - stone
23. heart - tulip
24. umbrella - church
25. eye - boy
26. briefcase - leaf
27. newspaper - king
28. squirrel - car
29. bell - coffee
30. hat - violet


STEP 3 When you have finished, check your answers against the list of correct responses on page 116. You must not only recall a word on the list but also have it paired with the proper word in order to count it as correct. Do not look back at the original list of pairs. You should not study the word pairs until the next trail.

STEP 4 Record the number of words you remembered correctly in Trial 1 in the appropriate column in the scoring table below.

SCORING TABLE

No. of correct responses

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

STEP 5 Go back to the list of word pairs presented in step 2 above, and study it for two more minutes. When the two minutes are up, go to the answer sheet for Trial 2 and fill in as many words as you can recall. Do not look back at your responses in Trial 1. When you are finished, score your performance and record the score in the appropriate place in the scoring table.

STEP 6 Repeat step 5 ten more times (for a total of twelve times) or until you have two consecutive perfect recalls, whichever comes first. Be sure not to look back at your responses on previous trials. Record your results in the table above.

Plot the results of your learning trials on Figure 6.1. When you connect the lines between the dots, the curve that results is called a learning curve. If your results on this task are similar to those of most people, your learning curve should look something like that in Figure 6.2.

Figure 6.1 Acquisition Curve for a Paired-Associate Learning Task

Figure 6.2 Typical Acquisition Curve for a Paired-Associate Learning Task

Experimental Procedure: Experiment 2

The second experiment you can do follows the same procedure as Experiment 1. It is intended to demonstrate the phenomenon called relearning. Perhaps you have noticed in your school work that when you learn something but don't rehearse it for a while, you can no longer remember it. However, if you study it again, you can relearn it the second time much faster than you originally learned it.

You can demonstrate this principle by waiting for one week (or longer if you wish) before you try to study and recall the word pairs in Experiment 1. Be sure you do not rehearse the words during this period of time. When you are ready to try the relearning task, cut apart the answer sheets for Trials 13 through 16, turn to the word list in Experiment 1, and study the pairs for two minutes. When your time is up, go to the answer sheets for Trial 13 and try to recall as many of the paired associates as possible. Correct your answers and record your score in the scoring table.

Repeat this procedure three more times, each time recording your scores in slots 14—16 of the scoring table. Analyzing the Results

Plot your scores for these four relearning trials along with those of the last three trials from Experiment 1 on Figure 6.3. Compare your results to the typical results shown in Figure 6.4. Do your results resemble those in this figure? (These figures appear on p. 117.)

Compare the number of correct responses you had for the last trial of Experiment 1 (Trial 12) and the first trial of Experiment 2 (Trial 13). Do you have more correct responses on Trial 12? If so, you have evidence that you forgot some of the correct responses during the week you did not study. Could you relearn the list faster than you learned it in Experiment 1? This would be indicated by a higher score on Trial 16 than on Trial 4. Most people find relearning an easier task than original learning.

What implications do the results of these two experiments have for the strategy you use to study your college courses? Do you think frequent repetition would help you remember facts? Can you think of any ways these results can help you study more effectively?

 Figure 6.3 Relearning After One-Week Delay for a Paired-Associate Learning Task

Figure 6.4 Typical Curve Showing Relearning After One-Week Delay