Amount and locus of stimulus-response overlap in paired-associate acquisition.

Rated acoustic (articulatory) similarity for word pairs varying in number and ordinal position of common letters

“…,"eil 4, Thc eorrection formula employed was a standard one: [P(C) -g] /(1 -g), where P(C) is thc obscrved proportion eorrect and g is the probability 01' a eorrect guess, 0,5 in this case, 5,1t is possible that the words comprising many S pairs were not complctely synonymous, so that the ~emantic content of a study word was slightly different from that of its distractor. In that case, reeognition of S pairs would be expeeted to be ~omcwhat better than that obtained when both words of an S pair are perfeet synonyms, Rated acoustic (articulatory) similarity for word pairs varying in number and ordinal position of com mon letters (2) discriminations between stimuli are required, as in paired-associate (Nelson & Rowe, 1969) and serial-reeall learning (Nelson, 1969), diffieulty of acquisition increased in the order middle (M), last (L), first (F) for stimulus sets sharing letters within single locations and in the order middle-and-Iast (M + L), first-and-middle, (F + M), first-and-Iast (F + L) for sets in which leiters were shared within two ordinal positions, A similar ordering for the dual-Iocus conditions also has been reported when paired-associate stimuli were nonsense syllables (Richardsoll & Chisholm, 1969;Runquist, 1968a), When stimuli could be grouped together as in free reeall (Nelson, 1969) and when paired-associate stimuli shared leiters with their responses (Nelson & Garland, 1969), orders of difficulty by identity locus were reversed, One explanation of these results assumes t hat t he stimuli were coded by pronunciation, rendering the codes subject to acoustic (or articulatory) interference or facilitation depending lIpon the task requiremcnts (Runquist, 1968a), Accordingly, to account for the cffects of variations in locus or identicalletters in the various Icarning tasks, this hypothesis predicts Ihat rated acoustic similarity should increase in the order M, L, and F for pairs of words sharing letters within a single locus and in the order M + L, F + M, and F + L for word pairs sharing letters within two ordinal positions. The only available data '-lave been inconsistent with this prediction, Runquist (l968b) found that word pairs sharing first letters were rated as more similar than were pairs overlapping in middle or last letters, which do not diffeT.…”

“…However, consistent (Nelson, 1969;Nelson & Rowe, 1969), acquisition rate has been fastest for Condition M + L relative to Conditions F + M and F + L, even though these stimuli have been judged as more similar in sound and, hence, should be more difficult to discriminate because of the generation of a greater degree of acoustic interference. Similarly, when stimuli could have been grouped or recalled together (Nelson, 1969;Nelson & Garland, 1969) and acoustic similarity should have facilitated performance, recall for this condition was generally below that for the other dual-locus conditions. The only way to reconcile the rating and acquisition data for the M + L condition would be to assume that different processes are involved in the two tasks.…”

Independence of phonetic and imaginal features.

“…for free or for serial recall and when stimuli overlap with their responses (Nelson & Garland, 1969;Nelson, Fosselman, & Peebles, 1971). Nelson (1972) has interpreted the ordinal position effect as reflecting the processing of words, at least in part, as phonetic (acoustic-articulatory) sequences having a characteristic first-last-middle structure.…”

The power of sound in L2 idiom learning

“…A strong finding is that when participants are asked to recall practiced word-pairs in any order they like, pairs that show PhS are learned faster and recalled better than nonPhS pairs. This holds true for rhyme (e.g., Bower and Bolton 1969;Nelson and Garland 1969), for alliteration+assonance (e.g., hatham) (Bower and Bolton 1969;Nelson and Garland 1969), and for alliteration and assonance separately (Nelson and Garland 1969).…”

“…Bower & Bolton, 1969; Nelson & Garland, 1969), for alliteration+assonance (e.g. ha t – ha m ) (Bower & Bolton, 1969; Nelson & Garland, 1969), and for alliteration and assonance separately (Nelson & Garland, 1969).…”