Does valence play a role in children's sensitivity to and use of moral information in the service of selective learning? In the present experiment, we explored this question by presenting 3- to 5-year-old children with informants who behaved in ways consistent or inconsistent with sociomoral norms, such as helping a peer retrieve a toy or…

In this study of errorless learning a procedure is tested which allows the subject himself to adjust the speed at which a supplementary stimulus aid is withdrawn. A standard match-to-sample apparatus with 1 sample window above and 4 matching (response) windows below was used. Tokens were delivered for correct responses and the correct matching…

As a result of findings of a previous study, this study, which sought to program preschool subjects to wait one minute for reinforcement, used pause-building procedures before delay conditions were started. The children, 3- to 5-year-olds, were designated either Baseline (control) subjects (n=3) or Programmed (experimental) subjects (n=5). Though…

A sequence of studies compared two types of discrimination formation: errorless learning and trial-and-error procedures. The subjects were three boys and five girls from a university preschool. The children performed the experimental tasks at a typical match-to-sample apparatus with one sample window above and four match (response) windows below.…

This study examined the ability of preschool children to process and use conceptual category information in a disrcimination learning task. A total of 60 boys and girls between the ages of 2 1/2 and 4 years completed a 3-choice discrimination learning task. On each of 12 trials, a child was presented with three magazine photographs: one of an…

Examines the importance of (1) dimensional characteristics of stimuli present in discrimination transfer tasks, (2) having contrasting stimuli presented simultaneously, and (3) subjects age. Subjects were rural Mexican youths, ages 4 to 10. Reversal and nonreversal type discrimination transfer problems were used in the study. (DP)

Results revealed that (1) relevant verbal experience facilitated learning only for preschoolers, (2) irrelevant verbal experience did not interfere with learning, and (3) visual highlighting exerted no significant effects. (Author/MB)

Presents a study of paired-associative learning involving a total of 80 preschool and second grade children. Four familiarization categories of pretraining were utilized; results are discussed in terms of the effects of pretraining conditions and age on paired-associative learning and their consistency with some developmental hypotheses and phase…

This study investigated the spontaneous use of verbal mediators in discrimination learning, the transfer of mediators to a free recall task, and the effects of a pretraining task on performance. The discrimination tasks required nursery school children (80) to: (1) sort three instances each of two different concepts in a conceptually consistent…

A STUDY, IN PROGRESS, IS ATTEMPTING TO DETERMINE THE INTERACTION OF VARIOUS REWARD CONDITIONS AND VARIOUS TYPES OF PRESCHOOL EXPERIENCE WITH DISCRIMINATION LEARNING. THE SUBJECTS ARE 240 4- AND 5-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN WITH THREE TYPES OF PRESCHOOL EXPERIENCE--1 TO 3 MONTHS OF HEAD START, 10 TO 12 MONTHS OF HEAD START, AND NO ATTENDANCE IN A PRESCHOOL…