Factors Involved in the Negative Transfer from Isolated Learning to Simultaneous Learning

摘要

Six experiments were intended to characterize more completely a phenomenon found when lists were first learned in isolation and then placed together for simultaneous learning. The subjects learned three lists, each list clearly distinguishable from the other. One of the lists was recalled, another was tested for frequency information, and the memory for the third was tested by recognition procedures. The findings of interest occurred in moving from isolated learning to simultaneous learning. Recall performance was essentially uninfluenced, whereas both recognition performance and frequency judgments were degraded. In the case of frequency information, the effects for some experiments indicated that no residue of the isolated learning remained. In the present work replications were undertaken and certain variables were manipulated to see if the magnitude of the phenomenon could be changed. One of the experiments also dealt with transfer from simultaneous learning to isolated learning, and another showed that associative learning occurred for items presented together for study in simultaneous learning. Degree of level of isolated learning had only a small effect ont he negative transfer observed in subsequent simultaneous learning; the higher the degree of learning the less the negative effect. However, this was not consistent in all experiments. Indeed, the phenomena involved seemed particularly sensitive to what would normally be considered minor variables and there were inconsistencies both within and between experiments.