Effects of percentage occurrence of response members and its method of presentation on verbal discrimination learning and transfer

Each of 144 Ss learned two verbal discrimination (VD) lists for six trials. Two levels of percentage occurrence of response members (100% or 50%) were combined factorially with two methods of presentation and three transfer paradigms (C1-I2, C2-I1, C2-I2). In first-list learning, with one method of presentation in the 50,% ORM entire list was presented with only half the correct (C) items designated on each study trial, while in the second method only half the list was presented with all C items underlined. There were no differences between the two methods in the 100% ORM condition. The results indicated that % ORM was a significant variable in first-list learning, supporting the findings of Newby and Young (1972). No effect was found for method of presentation. Also, no real significant effect of these two variables was found in VD transfer. All results were interpreted in terms of the frequency theory of VD learning.