Mediated Responses to Size and Brightness as a Function of Age

Discrimination-shift behavior as a function of rule learning and the number of irrelevant categories

“…Following the completion of the last mandatory training problem the subjects were given an optional-shift discrimination problem (Kendler, Kendler, & Learnard, 1962). Whereas in a mandatory shift problem the subject is required to execute a Ror ED-shift, an optional shift allows the subject to choose between responding in a R or ED manner.…”

Mediational Models in Reversal and Nonreversal Shift Learning

“…In addition, Kendler and Kendler (1959) found no difference in kindergarten children in the relative ease of learning a RS and a NRS. However, using the procedure which allows a subject to respond in either a reversal or a nonreversal way, Kendler, Kendler and Learnard (1962) found that the percentage of children who responded in a reversal way increased gradually from 50% at age 4 yr. to 62.5% at age 10 yr. Then in order to make clear that infrahuman organisms and children below the age of 5 or 6 execute a NRS more rapidly than a RS, but adult humans vis-a-vis, both a single unit S-R theory and a mediational one. A single unit theory assumes a direct association between the external stimulus and overt response and then it would predict the ease of NRS relative to RS in very young children and rats.…”

“…Kendlers have attributed the superior performance of adults in a RS to implicit mediating association which adult subjects acquire through responding to a relevant dimension of stimulus and then utilize under a RS condition. Mediating association is hypothesized to be coordinated to introspective reports, language behavior, muscular movement, and other observable events Kendler, Kendler & Learnard, 1962). Although Kendlers suggested that mediation is conceived of as a representational response or a perceptual response, often covert, to a stimulus dimension, the importance of verbal responses associated with a relevant dimension has been emphasized throughout their studies.…”

Optional shift behavior in children and young and elderly adults

“…The optional shift paradigm has been used by the Kendlers (Kendler, Kendler, & Learnard, 1962;Kendler & Kendler, 1966 for examining the development of mediational processes in children's discrirnination learning. This research has consistently indicated that between preschool and college age, the percentage of Ss making an optional reversal shift increases with age, while the percentage of Ss making an optional non re versal or nonselective shift decreases.…”