Transfer in verbal materials with dissimilar stimuli and response similarity varied.

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Abstract
The A-B, C-B paradigm in verbal learning is commonly said to be the basic paradigm for positive transfer. Furthermore, it is commonly believed that as the responses in the paradigm become less and less similar, positive transfer decreases. Such a relationship cannot be predicted strictly on the basis of interlist stimulus or response generalization. However, such a relationship would be expected if there is a transfer of response generalization. The present experiments studied positive transfer in paired-associate lists when interlist response similarity was varied from identity to low similarity, with the interlist stimulus similarity always low. Lists were constructed so that intralist response similarity was low. Under such conditions generalization theory would predict no relationship between response similarity and transfer. However, since it is difficult to remove all similarities among responses, 2 parallel expts. were performed in which one provided for predifferentiation of responses before learning the first paired-associate list and the other did not. Pre-differentiation of responses was carried out by verbal-discrimination learning prior to the learning of the two paired-associate lists for a given condition of response similarity. Learning of all lists was carried to one perfect trial. The results show (a) Interlist response similarity was not related significantly to amount of transfer in either experiment. (b) The predifferentiation procedure had a small and statistically insignificant effect on transfer. (c) Significant positive transfer occurred in all conditions. These results indicate that A-B, C-B cannot be considered a basic paradigm of positive transfer any more than can a paradigm in which responses are quite dis-similar. Whether or not interlist response similarity is related to amount of positive transfer (when stimuli are dissimilar) probably depends upon the level of intratask response similarity.
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