MAP602_Experimental Psychology

Discrimination Learning 245 detect danger, learn about differences, and more. One example of discrimination learning in humans would be a baby who reacts differently to their mother’s voice than to a stranger’s voice. Discrimination learning can be used to see what differences an animal will respond to. For example, since we are unable to have general two-way communication with dogs, we could show a dog two different stimuli that are the same in every way other than one, such as color. We could then use discrimination learning to see which colors a dog can discriminate between. Discrimination learning has limitations. One limitation is the relative-validity effect. This effect states that organisms learn to give more attention to the stimuli that are of more importance to them. Another limitation is the blocking effect. This effect will occur if there is a discriminative stimulus, such as a cat hearing the sound of a bell ringing, that is presented by itself and then it is followed by a reinforcement, such as food for the cat. We would repeat this until the cat starts to salivate when the bell rings. If we then added a stimulus of a flash of light after the bell rings, and then followed it by reinforcement (the cat food), it may result in little to no response to a second stimulus. Discrimination learning can be used as a part of training for more difficult tasks, including the judgement bias tasks and Iowa gambling task described earlier in the chapter. It can, however, also be used as a task in and of itself, to determine the ability of animals to discriminate between two stimuli and the capacity of animals to learn and perform tasks based on discrimination in different modalities. Visual discrimination is frequently used in discrimination learning in various species. This can entail the use of lights, including discrimination between light color, intensity, or frequency of flashing lights. Visual stimuli can also include the use of pictures or patterns. Pigs have visual acuity which is inferior to humans, sheep, and cattle but which should, in theory, be quite sufficient for learning visual discriminations. In practice, however, discrimination based on visual stimuli in pigs has proven quite difficult, requiring lengthy training to show operant responses to distinct 2D shapes. Discrimination of conspecifics based on photographs, which has been demonstrated in domestic sheep and cows did not seem to be possible in pigs. Discrimination tasks based on auditory stimuli have been more successful, with pigs showing distinct operant responses to auditory stimuli of different frequencies. Other modalities, such as odor cues or tactile cues, have yet to be tested in pigs. Given their strong olfactory and tactile CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

246 Experimental Psychology abilities (the snout is particularly sensitive), this may be an interesting avenue to explore to improve discrimination learning. Learning discriminative image representations from data have evolved as a promising research area. A powerful image representation captures the prior distributions of data by learning the image features. These features are usually hierarchical in nature (low and high level features) and hence the image representations learn to define the more abstract concepts in terms of the less abstract ones. A good learned representation should be simple (usually linearly dependent), sparse, and possess spatial and temporal coherence. The depth of a network is also an important aspect in the representation learning. Representations learned from the higher layers of deep networks encode high level features of data. Discrimination learning is a process of learning to behave differently when given different, or unique, stimuli. Elizabeth used whistles with different pitches because she wanted to separate behaviors. She knew her cats would have no idea what she wanted them to do if she used one whistle to encourage every behavior. So, she used two tones: one tone that would tell the cats that it was time to eat and a second tone that would encourage the cats to go out the cat door. Conditioning is the ability to train an animal to perform a task given specific stimuli. Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was the first to demonstrate this in an experiment. He conditioned dogs to understand that the bell he was ringing meant that they were to be fed. He did not want the dogs to respond to another stimulus, such as the sound of a buzzer; he wanted them to learn to respond to a specific tone. This is where conditioning and discrimination learning intersect. Elizabeth was an animal lover who had amassed a herd of cats because she took in everybody else’s strays and tried to find them good homes. Her husband understood, but Elizabeth was exasperated over the problems ten healthy felines could cause. She decided she had to train her cats to come only when it was time for dinner or treats and to disappear when it was time to clean the litter boxes. Elizabeth remembered something from school about a man teaching a bunch of dogs to salivate when they heard a bell. She wondered if she could do the same thing. So she bought two whistles that had different pitches. Then, she started to train. Eventually, she was able to get the cats to CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Discrimination Learning 247 respond to feeding or treat time with one whistle and got them to go out the cat door with the differently pitched whistle. Whether she realized it or not, Elizabeth had used discrimination learning to condition her cats. Elizabeth did the same thing as Pavlov. She wanted her cats to distinguish between different tones and respond correctly depending on the tone they heard. So, she conditioned them to discriminate between different tones and respond with the connected behavior. 10.7 Key Words/Abbreviations  Discrimination Learning: Discrimination learning is defined in psychology as the ability to respond differently to different stimuli.  Phenomena of Discrimination Learning: Discrimination learning can be used as a part of training for more difficult tasks, including the judgement.  Visual Discrimination: Visual discrimination is frequently used in discrimination learning in various species.  Paradigms of Discrimination Learning: Discrimination learning is a process of learning to behave differently when given different, or unique, stimuli. 10.8 Learning Activity 1. You are suggested to prepare a report on “Concept of Discrimination Learning”. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ 2. You are required to identify the phenomena of Discrimination Learning and the impacts. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

248 Experimental Psychology 10.9 Unit End Exercises (MCQs and Descriptive) A. Descriptive Type Questions 1. Explain the concept of Discrimination Learning. 2. Discuss the interpretations of Discrimination Learning. 3. Explain the phenomena of Discrimination Learning. 4. Write note on: Visual discrimination and Visual stimuli. 5. Explain in details about paradigms of Discrimination Learning. 6. Discuss the applications of Discrimination Learning. B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. Which of the following is defined in psychology as the ability to respond differently to different stimuli? (a) Discrimination learning (b) Perception (c) Presentation (d) Reinforcement 2. Who studied under John B. Watson, focused mainly on studying learning and discrimination? (a) Karl Lashley (b) Gustatory (c) Kinesthetic (d) None of the above 3. Discrimination learning can be used as a part of training for more difficult tasks, including __________. (a) The judgement bias tasks (b) Iowa gambling task (c) Both (a) and (b) (d) None of the above CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Discrimination Learning 249 4. Which of the following is frequently used in discrimination learning in various species? (a) Visual discrimination (b) Discrimination learning (c) Perception (d) Presentation 5. Which of the following is the application of Discrimination Learning? (a) Ernst Heinrich Weber (b) Gustav Theodor Fechner (c) Fechner (d) Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (a) Discrimination learning is used almost every subfield of psychology (b) It was a classic topic in the psychology of learning from the 1920s to the 1970s (c) Comparative psychology, where a key issue was whether continuous or discontinuous learning processes. (d) All the above Answers: 1. (a), 2. (a), 3. (c), 4. (a), 5. (d) 10.10 References References of this unit have been given at the end of the book.  CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

250 Experimental Psychology UNIT 11 VERBAL LEARNING Structure: 11.0 Learning Objectives 11.1 Introduction 11.2 Hermann Ebbinghaus 11.3 Nature ofVerbal Learning 11.4 The Concept of Verbal Learning 11.5 Determinants ofVerbal Learning 11.6 Summary 11.7 Key Words/Abbreviations 11.8 LearningActivity 11.9 Unit End Exercises (MCQs and Descriptive) 11.10 References 11.0 Learning Objectives After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Explain the verbal learning  Discuss about Hermann Ebbinghaus CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Verbal Learning 251 11.1 Introduction Verbal learning is the process of acquiring, retaining and recalling of verbal material. At its most elementary level, it can be defined as a process of building associations between a stimulus and a response, with both of them being verbal. Serial learning is memorizing a list of words in a particular order. Some assessments have been developed to measure serial learning. Typically, people can effectively memorize the words at the beginning and end of the list, but struggle more with remembering words in the center of the list. Recall is more accurate when subjects make associations between the words in the list. An example of serial learning in school is when students are required to learn the Presidents of the United States in order. 11.2 Hermann Ebbinghaus Hermann Ebbinghaus (January 24, 1850 to February 26, 1909) was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve. He was the father of the neo-Kantian philosopher Julius Ebbinghaus. Early Life Ebbinghaus was born in Barmen, in the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia, as the son of a wealthy merchant, Carl Ebbinghaus. Little is known about his infancy except that he was brought up in the Lutheran faith and was a pupil at the town Gymnasium. At the age of 17 (1867), he began attending the University of Bonn, where he had planned to study history and philology. However, during his time there he developed an interest in philosophy. In 1870, his studies were interrupted when he served with the Prussian Army in the Franco-Prussian War. Following this short stint in the military, Ebbinghaus finished his dissertation on Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophie des Unbewussten (philosophy of the unconscious) and received his doctorate on August 16, 1873, when he was 23 years old. During the next three years, he spent time at Halle and Berlin. Professional Career After acquiring his Ph.D., Ebbinghaus moved around England and France, tutoring students to support himself. In England, he may have taught in two small schools in the south of the country CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

252 Experimental Psychology (Gorfein, 1885). In London, in a used bookstore, he came across Gustav Fechner’s book Elemente der Psychophysik (Elements of Psychophysics), which spurred him to conduct his famous memory experiments. After beginning his studies at the University of Berlin, he founded the third psychological testing lab in Germany (third to Wilhelm Wundt and Georg Elias Müller). He began his memory studies here in 1879. In 1885, the same year that he published his monumental work, Über das Gedächtnis. Untersuchungen zur experimentellen Psychologie, later published in English under the title Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. He was made a professor at the University of Berlin, most likely in recognition of this publication. In 1890, along with Arthur König, he founded the psychological journal Zeitschrift für Physiologie und Psychologie der Sinnesorgane. In 1894, he was passed over for promotion to head of the philosophy department at Berlin, most likely due to his lack of publications. Instead, Carl Stumpf received the promotion. As a result of this, Ebbinghaus left to join the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), in a chair left open by Theodor Lipps (who took over Stumpf’s position when he moved to Berlin). While in Breslau, he worked on a commission that studied how children’s mental ability declined during the school day. While the specifics on how these mental abilities were measured have been lost, the successes achieved by the commission laid the groundwork for future intelligence testing. At Breslau, he again founded a psychological testing laboratory. In 1902, Ebbinghaus published his next piece of writing entitled Die Grundzüge der Psychologie (Fundamentals of Psychology). It was an instant success and continued to be long after his death. In 1904, he moved to Halle where he spent the last few years of his life. His last published work, Abriss der Psychologie (Outline of Psychology) was published six years later, in 1908. This, too, continued to be a success, being re-released in eight different editions. Shortly after this publication, on February 26, 1909, Ebbinghaus died from pneumonia at the age of 59. Research on Memory Ebbinghaus was determined to show that higher mental processes could actually be studied using experimentation, which was in opposition to the popularly held thought of the time. To control for most potentially confounding variables, Ebbinghaus wanted to use simple acoustic encoding and maintenance rehearsal for which a list of words could have been used. As learning would be affected by prior knowledge and understanding, he needed something that could be easily memorized but CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Verbal Learning 253 which had no prior cognitive associations. Easily formable associations with regular words would interfere with his results. So, he used items that would later be called “nonsense syllables” (also known as the CVC trigram). A nonsense syllable is a consonant-vowel-consonant combination, where the consonant does not repeat and the syllable does not have prior meaning. BOL (sounds like “Ball”) and DOT (already a word) would then not be allowed. However, syllables such as DAX, BOK, and YAT would all be acceptable (though Ebbinghaus left no examples). After eliminating the meaning-laden syllables, Ebbinghaus ended up with 2,300 resultant syllables. Once he had created his collection of syllables, he would pull out a number of random syllables from a box and then write them down in a notebook. Then, to the regular sound of a metronome, and with the same voice inflection, he would read out the syllables, and attempt to recall them at the end of the procedure. One investigation alone required 15,000 recitations. It was later determined that humans impose meaning even on nonsense syllables to make them more meaningful. The nonsense syllable PED (which is the first three letters of the word “pedal”) turns out to be less nonsensical than a syllable such as KOJ; the syllables are said to differ in association value. It appears that Ebbinghaus recognized this, and only referred to the strings of syllables as “nonsense” in that the syllables might be less likely to have a specific meaning and he should make no attempt to make associations with them for easier retrieval. Limitations to Memory Research There are several limitations to his work on memory. The most important one was that Ebbinghaus was the only subject in his study. This limited the study’s generalizability to the population. Although he attempted to regulate his daily routine to maintain more control over his results, his decision to avoid the use of participants sacrificed the external validity of the study despite sound internal validity. In addition, although he tried to account for his personal influences, there is an inherent bias when someone serves as researcher as well as participant. Also, Ebbinghaus’ memory research halted research in other, more complex matters of memory such as semantic and procedural memory and mnemonics. Contributions to Memory In 1885, he published his groundbreaking Über das Gedächtnis (“On Memory”, later translated to English as Memory:A Contribution to Experimental Psychology) in which he described experiments he conducted on himself to describe the processes of learning and forgetting. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

254 Experimental Psychology Ebbinghaus made several findings that are still relevant and supported to this day. First, Ebbinghaus made a 2,300 three-letter syllables to measure mental associations that helped him find that memory is orderly. Second, and arguably his most famous finding, was the forgetting curve. The forgetting curve describes the exponential loss of information that one has learned. The sharpest decline occurs in the first twenty minutes and the decay is significant through the first hour. The curve levels off after about one day. The learning curve described by Ebbinghaus refers to how fast one learns information. The sharpest increase occurs after the first try and then gradually evens out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each repetition. Like the forgetting curve, the learning curve is exponential. Ebbinghaus had also documented the serial position effect, which describes how the position of an item affects recall. The two main concepts in the serial position effect are recency and primacy. The recency effect describes the increased recall of the most recent information because it is still in the short-term memory. The primacy effect causes better memory of the first items in a list due to increased rehearsal and commitment to long-term memory. Another important discovery is that of savings. This refers to the amount of information retained in the subconscious even after this information cannot be consciously accessed. Ebbinghaus would memorize a list of items until perfect recall and then would not access the list until he could no longer recall any of its items. He then would relearn the list, and compare the new learning curve to the learning curve of his previous memorization of the list. The second list was generally memorized faster, and this difference between the two learning curves is what Ebbinghaus called “savings”. Ebbinghaus also described the difference between involuntary and voluntary memory, the former occurring “with apparent spontaneity and without any act of the will” and the latter being brought “into consciousness by an exertion of the will”. Prior to Ebbinghaus, most contributions to the study of memory were undertaken by philosophers and centered on observational description and speculation. For example, Immanuel Kant used pure description to discuss recognition and its components and Sir Francis Bacon claimed that the simple observation of the rote recollection of a previously learned list was “no use to the art” of memory. This dichotomy between descriptive and experimental study of memory would resonate later in Ebbinghaus’ life, particularly in his public argument with former colleague Wilhelm Dilthey. However, more than a century before Ebbinghaus, Johann Andreas Segner invented the “Segner-wheel” to CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Verbal Learning 255 see the length of after-images by seeing how fast a wheel with a hot coal attached had to move for the red ember circle from the coal to appear complete. Ebbinghaus’ effect on memory research was almost immediate. With very few works published on memory in the previous two millennia, Ebbinghaus’ works spurred memory research in the United States in the 1890s, with 32 papers published in 1894 alone. This research was coupled with the growing development of mechanized mnemometers, or devices that aided in the recording and study of memory. The reaction to his work in his day was mostly positive. Noted psychologist William James called the studies “heroic” and said that they were “the single most brilliant investigation in the history of psychology”. Edward B. Titchener also mentioned that the studies were the greatest undertaking in the topic of memory since Aristotle. Other Contributions Ebbinghaus can also be credited with pioneering sentence completion exercises, which he developed in studying the abilities of schoolchildren. It was these same exercises that Alfred Binet had borrowed and incorporated into the Binet-Simon intelligence scale. Sentence completion had since then also been used extensively in memory research, especially in tapping into measures of implicit memory, and also has been used in psychotherapy as a tool to help tap into the motivations and drives of the patient. He had also influenced Charlotte Bühler, who along with Lev Vygotsky and others went on to study language meaning and society. Ebbinghaus is also credited with discovering an optical illusion now known after its discoverer the Ebbinghaus illusion, which is an illusion of relative size perception. In the best-known version of this illusion, two circles of identical size are placed near to each other and one is surrounded by large circles while the other is surrounded by small circles; the first central circle then appears smaller than the second central circle. This illusion is now used extensively in research in cognitive psychology, to find out more about the various perception pathways in our brain. Ebbinghaus is also largely credited with drafting the first standard research report. In his paper on memory, Ebbinghaus arranged his research into four sections: the introduction, the methods, the results, and a discussion section. The clarity and organization of this format was so impressive to CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

256 Experimental Psychology contemporaries that it has now become standard in the discipline, and all research reports follow the same standards laid out by Ebbinghaus. After Ebbinghaus worked on memory, he also had a contribution with color vision. In 1890, Ebbinghaus came up with the double pyramid design where corners were rounded off. Unlike notable contemporaries like Titchener and James, Ebbinghaus did not promote any specific school of psychology nor was he known for extensive lifetime research, having done only three works. He never attempted to bestow upon himself the title of the pioneer of experimental psychology, did not seek to have any “disciples”, and left the exploitation of the new field to others. Discourse on the Nature of Psychology In addition to pioneering experimental psychology, Ebbinghaus was also a strong defender of this direction of the new science, as is illustrated by his public dispute with University of Berlin colleague, Wilhelm Dilthey. Shortly after Ebbinghaus left Berlin in 1893, Dilthey published a paper extolling the virtues of descriptive psychology, and condemning experimental psychology as boring, claiming that the mind was too complex, and that introspection was the desired method of studying the mind. The debate at the time had been primarily whether psychology should aim to explain or understand the mind and whether it belonged to the natural or human sciences. Many had seen Dilthey’s work as an outright attack on experimental psychology, Ebbinghaus included, and he responded to Dilthey with a personal letter and also a long scathing public article. Amongst his counterarguments against Dilthey, he mentioned that it is inevitable for psychology to do hypothetical work and that the kind of psychology that Dilthey was attacking was the one that existed before Ebbinghaus’ “experimental revolution”. Charlotte Bühler echoed his words some forty years later, stating that people like Ebbinghaus “buried the old psychology in the 1890s”. Ebbinghaus explained his scathing review by saying that he could not believe that Dilthey was advocating the status quo of structuralists like Wilhelm Wundt and Titchener and attempting to stifle psychology’s progress. Some contemporary texts still describe Ebbinghaus as a philosopher rather than a psychologist and he had also spent his life as a professor of philosophy. However, Ebbinghaus himself would probably describe himself as a psychologist considering that he fought to have psychology viewed as a separate discipline from philosophy. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Verbal Learning 257 Influences There has been some speculation as to what influenced Ebbinghaus in his undertakings. None of his professors seem to have influenced him, nor are there suggestions that his colleagues affected him. Von Hartmann's work, on which Ebbinghaus based his doctorate, did suggest that higher mental processes were hidden from view, which may have spurred Ebbinghaus to attempt to prove otherwise. The one influence that has always been cited as having inspired Ebbinghaus was Gustav Fechner’s two-volume Elemente der Psychophysik (“Elements of Psychophysics”, 1860), a book which he purchased second-hand in England. It is said that the meticulous mathematical procedures impressed Ebbinghaus so much that he wanted to do for psychology what Fechner had done for psychophysics. This inspiration is also evident in that Ebbinghaus dedicated his second work Principles of Psychology to Fechner, signing it “I owe everything to you.” 11.3 Nature of Verbal Learning Verbal learning is the process of actively memorizing new material using mental pictures, associations and other activities. Verbal learning was first studied by Hermann Ebbinghaus, who used lists of nonsense syllables to test recall. Right from the birth, the child acquires skill. His bodily organs learn to handle the things. He moves his legs and begins to crawl. In source of time, he learns other motor, skills, like walking, speaking, drawing, writing, reading, playing music, cycling, swimming, etc. The child gets sensations through his organs of sense, and he attaches meaning to each sensation. The earliest sensations of the infant are undifferentiated to the extent that he cannot differentiate between one object and another. In course of time, he recognises specific objects, and perceives these separately. Indian psychologists have given explanation of perceptual learning its types and processes. They define conceptual learning as sense object contact. Pure sensation is indeterminate perception, and is the first stage in perceptual learning. The second step is determinate perception, wherein the object is revealed as endowed with its attributes and characteristics. As concrete thinking leads to abstract thinking, perceptual learning is followed by conceptual learning. A concept is a general idea, universal in character. A child sees a particular cow, and forms CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

258 Experimental Psychology some ideas of a cow, with some particular characteristics. Here, the ideation is on the basis of one particular cow. This is the particular percept but when a child sees number of cows, with some common characteristics, he locates certain general qualities in all the cows, and on the basis of these he forms a conception of ‘cow’. This is on the basis of percept which is made general. Thus, the child proceeds from particular to general and forms, in course of time, innumerable concepts, sometimes concrete and sometimes abstract. This is the basis of all thinking and ideational learning. When a few concepts are learnt, this forms the basis of raising the super-structure of knowledge and education, through association and assimilation. Conceptional learning is helped by associative learning in amassing a wealth of knowledge. New concepts are tagged with the past concepts through association, and as such, knowledge. While conceptual learning is on the affective side. A child, from the very beginning, utilizes his inborn trait of aesthetic sensibility, and acquires concepts coloured by appreciation. Attitudes are generalized dispositions for certain particular concepts, things, persons or activities. A child develops an attitude of affection towards his mother, an attitude of reverence towards the teacher, and an attitude of belongingness towards the family. His attitude towards play is most favorable. All this he learns and adopts gradually. 11.4 The Concept of Verbal Learning Verbal learning was first studied by Hermann Ebbinghaus, who used lists of nonsense syllables to test recall. Later, Frederic Bartlett refuted Ebbinghaus’ beliefs that nonsense syllables had an advantage over using words when testing verbal learning because the use of words adds the element of making a meaningful connection between words. At different stages of the development of the verbal learning studies, a variety of aspects of this phenomenon were highlighted. For example, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850- 1909) in his book On Memory (1885), focused on the processes of association building and recall, which shaped his experiments with verbal material. Ebbinghaus’ work, albeit not dealing explicitly with verbal learning, is considered as the first seminal work in the field, due to the material and the methods used. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Verbal Learning 259 Verbal learning can be based on different processes and can be classified in several types. The first process is serial verbal learning. People engage in it when they learn a list of verbal items (for example, words or syllables) while maintaining the order of the items. Psychologists test this type of learning by asking subjects to read a list of verbal stimuli and then reproduce this list while keeping the original order of the items. Such experiments have been widely used in tests of short- and long- term memory. A useful strategy that can be used while remembering such lists of words is to build associations between them. Thus, the first word “anticipates” the second, and, analogically, every word points to the one after it. Ebbinghaus called this learning strategy the serial anticipation method. Studies of this type of learning have also discovered the serial position effect, which says that different parts of the list are learned with different difficulty. Usually, the first few items are the easiest to learn, then come those at the end of the list. The hardest to learn are the items just after the middle. Another type of verbal learning is referred to paired associate learning. It happens when people read pairs of words, or other verbal stimuli, then get to see just one item of a pair and have to say what the other is. This type of learning is largely used in education, especially in learning foreign languages. Pupils learn vocabularies as pairs of known English words and words from another language, building associations between the items of a pair. Then, when presented with a foreign word (stimulus), the pupil has to name the corresponding English word (response). Free verbal learning is a type of learning, which people use when they learn lists of items regardless of their order. A task used to test this type of learning is free recall. The subject is asked to recall as many items from a list as possible, regardless of their sequence. Such tests are often used to establish organizational patterns of learning and memory. For example, the subject may use a clustering strategy – grouping items according to their similarity or the number of letters in them. Another kind of verbal learning is verbal discrimination (or recognition) learning. It is studied by a task which requires of the subject, after reading a list of items, to read another one and to say which items of the second list were present in the first. Verbal learning theorists use different materials in their tests. Ebbinghaus used nonsense syllables – syllables of the type consonant-vowel- consonant, such as GOC, TER and BIV. He argued that these stimuli were easily controlled and thus had an advantage for being used in the studies of memory compared to meaningful words. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

260 Experimental Psychology In 1932, British psychologist Frederic Bartlett (1886-1969) challenged Ebbinghaus’ view that nonsense syllables were easily controlled and that they eliminated meaning as a factor in learning. Another influential perspective and perhaps the most important contribution to this field was The Psychology of Human Learning: An Introduction (1942) by John McGeoch (1897-1942), a book which summarized many of the trends in verbal learning. In the 1950s, the verbal learning studies focused on verbal behavior – the characteristics of language and its use. In the 1960s through to the 1980s, psycholinguists developed models of word acquisition, verbal information processing and lexicon building. Examples of such models are the logogen model of John Morton (1969), which was considered to be an important theory, along with the PDP (parallel distributed processing) model of Mark Seidenberg and James Lloyd McClelland (1989). 11.5 Determinants of Verbal Learning Determinants of Verbal Learning can be summarized as follows: 1. Meaningfulness The more meaningfulness of an item the more readily and easily it is learnt. Ebbinghaus found that as the meaningfulness of the items in the serial list increases, the list requires fewer trials to learn. In free recall experiments, it was found that meaningfulness is positively related to the amount recalled. In paired associate learning experiments also, it was found that pairs with an average meaningfulness are learnt more rapidly than those with lower meaningfulness values. Noble found that as the meaningfulness of items increases lesser time is required for learning. Underwood observed that higher the mean­ingfulness, more rapid is the learning. 2. Frequency Learning and retention is also influenced by the frequency with which particular words are encountered. Hall found that the subjects recalled those items better which they frequently heard or saw. Underwood and Schulz found that the frequency with which words have been experienced determines their availability as responses in new connections. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Verbal Learning 261 3. Recency Murdock found that the probability of recall of individual items is a function of their position in the list when free recall is used. Along with other things, he found that items at the end of the list are recalled better as compaired to the one’s in the middle of the list. This is due to the recency effect. Another aspect of recency is if the time interval between presentation and testing is increased there will be a decline in recall. Less the time interval better the recall, keeping aside other aspects. Yet another aspect of recency pertains to the ‘selector mechanism’. This refers to the tendency of not making error by responding with an item that is not present in the list. This mechanism is the outcome of recency, so it is suggested. The ‘selector mechanism’ provides a set to respond from a restricted pool of items. This set disappears as the length of time interval between presentation and recall is increased. 4. Similarity There is a close relationship between similarity and generalization. During the course of learning when the stimulus is attached to a response and thereby learnt in that manner, we at the same time develop a tendency to make the same response to similar stimuli. However, if the stimulus items are similar to each other, the learning task gets difficult because of inter-pair generalization. Hull found that similarity between S-R hinders the association between them rather than the learning of discrete responses. 5. Imagery and Concreteness The role of imagery in learning is an important one. When one learns verbal material, one may do so by forming images of it. The image arousing capacity of the verbal material is important. Concrete words are those which generate images easily. Abstract words, on the other hand, do not easily or not at all generate images. Thus, it is easier to learn words which are concrete. Epstein, Rock and Zuckerman found that in learning the concreteness of the stimulus is more important than that of the response term. Yuille and Madigan also highlighted the role of concrete stimuli in facilitating verbal learning. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

262 Experimental Psychology 6. Motivation Where there is a will, there is a way. This holds true for verbal learning as well. Motivation plays a significantly important role in verbal learning. Deese and Hube have shown that motivation influences the amount of casual learning. D'Amato has highlighted the positive motivational role played by instructions given to the subject before a verbal learning task. In his subjects the amount of learning increased as a result of instructions given before the learning task. These instructions served as an incentive and the subject was thereby motivated to do better. However, not all studies have born positive results on the role played by motivation in verbal learning. Harley and Weiner found that verbal learning is least influenced by the magnitude of reinforcement. 11.6 Summary Verbal learning is the process of acquiring, retaining and recalling of verbal material. At its most elementary level, it can be defined as a process of building associations between a stimulus and a response, with both of them being verbal. Serial learning is memorizing a list of words in a particular order. Some assessments have been developed to measure serial learning. Typically, people can effectively memorize the words at the beginning and end of the list, but struggle more with remembering words in the center of the list. Recall is more accurate when subjects make associations between the words in the list. An example of serial learning in school is when students are required to learn the Presidents of the United States in order. Verbal learning was first studied by Hermann Ebbinghaus, who used lists of nonsense syllables to test recall. Later, Frederic Bartlett refuted Ebbinghaus’ beliefs that nonsense syllables had an advantage over using words when testing verbal learning because the use of words adds the element of making a meaningful connection between words. At different stages of the development of the verbal learning studies, a variety of aspects of this phenomenon were highlighted. For example, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850- 1909) in his book On Memory (1885), focused on the processes of association building and recall, which shaped his experiments with verbal material. Ebbinghaus’ work, albeit not dealing explicitly with verbal learning, is considered as the first seminal work in the field, due to the material and the methods used. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Verbal Learning 263 Verbal learning can be based on different processes and can be classified in several types. The first process is serial verbal learning. People engage in it when they learn a list of verbal items (for example, words or syllables) while maintaining the order of the items. Psychologists test this type of learning by asking subjects to read a list of verbal stimuli and then reproduce this list while keeping the original order of the items. Such experiments have been widely used in tests of short- and long- term memory. A useful strategy that can be used while remembering such lists of words is to build associations between them. Thus, the first word “anticipates” the second, and, analogically, every word points to the one after it. Ebbinghaus called this learning strategy the serial anticipation method. Studies of this type of learning have also discovered the serial position effect, which says that different parts of the list are learned with different difficulty. Usually, the first few items are the easiest to learn, then come those at the end of the list. The hardest to learn are the items just after the middle. Another type of verbal learning is referred to paired associate learning. It happens when people read pairs of words, or other verbal stimuli, then get to see just one item of a pair and have to say what the other is. This type of learning is largely used in education, especially in learning foreign languages. Pupils learn vocabularies as pairs of known English words and words from another language, building associations between the items of a pair. Then, when presented with a foreign word (stimulus), the pupil has to name the corresponding English word (response). Free verbal learning is a type of learning, which people use when they learn lists of items regardless of their order. A task used to test this type of learning is free recall. The subject is asked to recall as many items from a list as possible, regardless of their sequence. Such tests are often used to establish organizational patterns of learning and memory. For example, the subject may use a clustering strategy – grouping items according to their similarity or the number of letters in them. Another kind of verbal learning is verbal discrimination (or recognition) learning. It is studied by a task which requires of the subject, after reading a list of items, to read another one and to say which items of the second list were present in the first. Verbal learning theorists use different materials in their tests. Ebbinghaus used nonsense syllables – syllables of the type consonant-vowel- consonant, such as GOC, TER and BIV. He argued that these stimuli were easily controlled and thus had an advantage for being used in the studies of memory compared to meaningful words. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

264 Experimental Psychology Hermann Ebbinghaus (January 24, 1850 to February 26, 1909) was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve. He was the father of the neo-Kantian philosopher Julius Ebbinghaus. The learning curve described by Ebbinghaus refers to how fast one learns information. The sharpest increase occurs after the first try and then gradually evens out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each repetition. Like the forgetting curve, the learning curve is exponential. Ebbinghaus had also documented the serial position effect, which describes how the position of an item affects recall. The two main concepts in the serial position effect are recency and primacy. The recency effect describes the increased recall of the most recent information because it is still in the short-term memory. The primacy effect causes better memory of the first items in a list due to increased rehearsal and commitment to long-term memory. Verbal learning is the process of actively memorizing new material using mental pictures, associations, and other activities. Verbal learning was first studied by Hermann Ebbinghaus, who used lists of nonsense syllables to test recall. Right from the birth, the child acquires skill. His bodily organs learn to handle the things. He moves his legs and begins to crawl. In source of time, he learns other motor, skills, like walking, speaking, drawing, writing, reading, playing music, cycling, swimming, etc. The child gets sensations through his organs of sense, and he attaches meaning to each sensation. The earliest sensations of the infant are undifferentiated to the extent that he cannot differentiate between one object and another. In course of time, he recognises specific objects, and perceives these separately. Indian psychologists have given explanation of perceptual learning its types and processes. They define conceptual learning as sense object contact. Pure sensation is indeterminate perception, and is the first stage in perceptual learning. The second step is determinate perception, wherein the object is revealed as endowed with its attributes and characteristics. As concrete thinking leads to abstract thinking, perceptual learning is followed by conceptual learning. A concept is a general idea, universal in character. A child sees a particular cow, and forms CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Verbal Learning 265 some ideas of a cow, with some particular characteristics. Here, the ideation is on the basis of one particular cow. This is the particular percept but when a child sees number of cows, with some common characteristics, he locates certain general qualities in all the cows, and on the basis of these, he forms a conception of ‘cow’. This is on the basis of percept which is made general. Thus, the child proceeds from particular to general and forms, in course of time, innumerable concepts, sometimes concrete and sometimes abstract. This is the basis of all thinking and ideational learning. When a few concepts are learnt, this forms the basis of raising the super-structure of knowledge and education, through association and assimilation. Conceptional learning is helped by associative learning in amassing a wealth of knowledge. New concepts are tagged with the past concepts through association, and as such, knowledge. While conceptual learning is on the affective side, a child, from the very beginning, utilizes his inborn trait of aesthetic sensibility, and acquires concepts coloured by appreciation. Attitudes are generalised dispositions for certain particular concepts, things, persons or activities. A child develops an attitude of affection towards his mother, an attitude of reverence towards the teacher, and an attitude of belongingness towards the family. His attitude towards play is most favorable. All this he learns and adopts gradually. 11.7 Key Words/Abbreviations  Concept of Verbal Learning: Verbal learning was first studied by Hermann Ebbinghaus, who used lists of nonsense syllables to test recall.  Hermann Ebbinghaus: Hermann Ebbinghaus (January 24, 1850 to February 26, 1909) was a German psychologist  Nature of Verbal Learning: Verbal learning is the process of actively memorizing new material using mental pictures, associations and other activities.  Determinants of Verbal Learning: The more meaningfulness of an item the more readily and easily it is learnt. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

266 Experimental Psychology 11.7 Learning Activity 1. You are required to prepare a report on “Nature of Verbal Learning”. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ 2. You are suggested to identify Determinants of Verbal Learning. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ 11.8 Unit End Exercises (MCQs and Descriptive) A. Descriptive Type Questions 1. Discuss the concept of Verbal Learning. 2. Explain contribution of Hermann Ebbinghaus on Verbal Learning. 3. Discuss the nature of Verbal Learning. 4. Explain the determinants of Verbal Learning. B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. Which of the following is the process of acquiring, retaining and recalling of verbal material? (a) Verbal learning (b) Digital Learning (c) Computer Learning (d) All the above 2. Verbal learning was first studied by __________ who used lists of nonsense syllables to test recall? (a) Hermann Ebbinghaus (b) Olfactory (c) Gustatory (d) Kinesthetic CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Verbal Learning 267 3. Ebbinghaus’ work, albeit not dealing explicitly with __________. (a) General Learning (b) Digital Learning (c) Computer Learning (d) Verbal Learning 4. Psychologists test this type of learning by asking subjects to read a list of __________. (a) Verbal Stimuli (b) Digital Learning (c) Computer Learning (d) Verbal Learning 5. Ebbinghaus was determined to show that higher mental processes could actually be studied using __________. (a) Experimentation (b) Effectiveness (c) Efficiency (d) None of the above Answers: 1. (a), 2. (a), 3. (d), 4. (a), 5. (a) 11.8 References References of this unit have been given at the end of the book.  CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

268 Experimental Psychology REFERENCES 1. Baddley, A. (1997). Human Memory: Theory and Practice. New York: Psychology Press. 2. D'Amato, M.R. (1979), “Experimental Psychology: Methodology”, Psychophysics and Learning, New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill. 3. Fleiss, J.L. (1986), “Reliability of Measurement”, The Design and Analysis of Clinical Experiments, 1-32. 4. Fraisse, P., Piaget, J. and Reuchlin, M. (1963), Experimental Psychology: Its Scope and Method. 5. Goldstein, B.E. (2002), Sensation and Perception, USA: Wadsworth. 6. Kling, J.W. and Riggs, L.A. (1984), Woodworth and Schlosberg Experimental Psychology, New Delhi: Khosla Publishing House. 7. Levine, G. and Parkinson, S. (1994), Experimental Methods in Psychology, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 8. Liszka, J.J. (1996), A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of C.S. Peirce, Indiana University Press. 9. McGuigan, F.J. (1969), Experimental Psychology, New Delhi Prentice Hall of India Pvt. Ltd. 10. McGuigan, F.J. (1997), Experimental Psychology: Methods of Research, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 11. Osgood, C.E. (1953), Method and Theory in Experimental Psychology, New York: Oxford Press. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

References 269 12. Pashler, H. (Ed) (2002), Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology, New York: Wiley 13. Peirce, C.S. and Jastrow, J. (1885), “On Small Differences in Sensation”, Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 3: 73-83. 14. Singh, A.K. (1997), Uchhtar Samanya Manovigyan, Varanasi: Motilal Banarasidas. 15. Sowa, J.F. (1984), Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. 16. Solso, R.L. (2001), Cognitive Psychology, Singapore: Pearson Education. 17. Stigler, S.M. (November 1992), “A Historical View of Statistical Concepts in Psychology and Educational Research”, American Journal of Education, 101(1): 60-70, doi: 10.1086/ 444032. 18. Trudy Dehue (December 1997), “Deception, Efficiency and Random Groups: Psychology and the Gradual Origination of the Random Group Design” (PDF), Isis, 88(4): 653-73, doi: 10.1086/383850. PMID 9519574.  CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)