Learning Mechanisms in Two-Trial Learning Sets by College Students

Summary

Undergraduate college students were tested to an arbitrary learning criterion on two-trial learning set formations. Results showed significantly easier acquisition of two-trial response-perseveration learning set to reinforced cues and two-trial response-shift learning set to nonreinforced cues than for two-trial response-perseveration learning set to nonreinforced cues and two-trial response-shift learning set to reinforced cues. Additional results showed that the subjects, after learning, had learned to approach or to avoid either reinforced or nonreinforced stimuli actually manipulated on the initial trials of each problem. These results were compared to the results of similar tests using infrahuman primates as subjects.