Persistence of performance differences on discrimination of varying difficulty.

Abstract
Sixteen naive rhesus monkeys were tested on a total of 768 six-trial problems in which the animals were required to discriminate between differentially colored squares mounted on otherwise identical 3-in. by 3-in. white cards. Four conditions of differential color-area were employed 12.5, 25, 50, and 100 per cent of the surface of both stimuli used in any problem. The results reveal significant interproblem learning and demonstrate learning-set formation for problems differing in difficulty. The significant differences in performance between all differential color-area conditions, however, indicate that discrimination difficulty is inversely related to the extent of differential color-area. During the last 576 problems, differences in performance among the various categories did not decrease with practice, and there was no indication that they were approaching a common asymptote.
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