Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how associationism mistakenly assumes that direct experience is possible; that is, there is expectation-free observation and association without prior expectation. Thus, associationism assumes that learning involves the absorption of information from the environment itself. However, contrary…

The purpose was to test the assumption that nonspecific facilitated learning of a second prose passage occurs in the situation in which an initial passage read by the subjects contained concrete referents designed to increase the comprehension of a difficult to understand second passage. Results supported the assumption. (Author/BJG)