The present study aimed at clarifying the effect of equivalence in verbatim memory. Experimental Ss (8th graders) learned past forms of composite English verbs after they had been given a general rule of change by tense of a composite verb, i. e., the past form of a composite verb can be constructed by transforming the basic verb into its past form without changing the prefix. They were expected to learn meaningfully, for they could establish equivalence by applying this rule to composite verbs, with the previously learned past form of basic verbs. Control Ss could not learn meaningfully unless they found the rule themselves.
Paired-associate learning, with present form as stimulus word and past form as response word, was attempted (See TABLE 1). First both groups learned the same list of 12 basic verbs and were tested for acquisition. Next, the rule for changing the tense of a composite verb was taught to experimental Ss only. Now both groups were given List 2, consisting entirely of 12 composite verbs, six of which corresponded to elements in List 1 (interchange?change, enclose?close, etc.), followed by an acquisition test. Next came List 3 with its 22 composite verbs. The six basic verbs of List 1 not represented in List 2 were each represented by two composite verbs (“appear” by “disappear” and “reappear”,“come” by “become” and “overcome”, etc.). Two more verbs from List 1 and 2 each had one “sister” verb on List 3 (“change”-“interchange”,“exchange” and “stand”-“understand”,“withstand”). The remaining eight verbs on List 3 were “new”.
Finally, a 42-word test was given consisting of Lists 2 and 3 along with eight previously untaught verbs (four basic, four composite) designated as List 4, all presented in random order. This gave us measures of retention for List 2 (See TABLE 3) and acquisition for List 3.
Experimental Ss showed significantly superior performance to control Ss on acquisition and retention tests of List 2 and acquisition test of List 3 (See TABLE 4-7). However, there was no marked difference regarding performance on guessing of past form of List 4 verbs (See TABLE 8). These findings imply that explicit presentation of the transformation rule facilitates establishment of equivalence.
When errors made by both groups are counted separately for “new” verbs, of which corresponding basic verbs didn't appear in List 1, and for “familiar” verbs having basic verbs presented in List 1, the former significantly outnumbers the latter. This suggests that Ss cannot learn new materials (paired associates of composite verbs) easily when direct standards (paired associates of basic verbs) with which equivalence is established are lacking,(See TABLE 4 & 7)
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