TRANSFER OF STIMULUS PREDIFFERENTIATION TO SHAPE RECOGNITION AND IDENTIFICATION LEARNING - ROLE OF PROPERTIES OF VERBAL LABELS

Undergraduates were given preliminary paired-associate practice in labeling random shapes with 1 of 3 kinds of verbal labels and then were given a shape-recognition task (Exp. I and II), or an identification-learning task (Exp. III) to assess effects of verbal pretraining. Recognition performance was found to depend primarily on the relevance of the verbal label, as distinct from meaningfulness, while transfer to the identification-learning task depended on both response relevance and response meaningfulness. Results suggest that the verbal label may serve both confirming and directing functions, varying with the relationship between pretraining and transfer-task activities and with intratask properties of the pretraining stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1968 American Psychological Association.