Recent research has indicated a growing interest in the effects of various kinds of preliminary verbal training upon the later acquisition of skill in performing a motor task. A number of investigators (1,2,3,5,6,7,8,10) have studied the effects of pretraining in which S gains knowledge about the motor task stimuli. This pretraining has generally consisted of verbal paired-associates learning in which the stimuli are the same as, or substitutes for, those of the motor task, while the verbal responses are unrelated to the required motor responses. Increased discriminability among the motor task stimuli, as a result of the pretraining, has been referred to either as stimulus predifferentiation or acquired distinctiveness of cues. Several studies using stimulus predifferentiation training have demonstrated positive transfer to the motor task (1, 2, 5, 7, 8), but two investigators have found evidence of an interfering effect (1, 10).Superior motor performance has also been shown to be a result of the transfer of nonspecific factors following paired-associates learning in which both the stimuli and responses are unrelated to those of the motor task (6). Because of these effects of "per-1 This article is based on a dissertation submitted to the Graduate College of the State University of Iowa in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree. The writer is indebted to Dr. Don Lewis for advice and assistance throughout the course of the investigation.
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