ONE-TRIAL LEARNING WITH CONTROL OF ITEM DIFFICULTY,
Abstract
Ratings of difficulty were obtained for each of 2500 letter-number pairs. The ratings were used to construct three pools of items: Homogeneous Easy, Homogeneous Difficult, and Heterogeneous. Rock's (1957) experiment was repeated thrice, once with each pool of rated items. Each replication used 30 Ss. The manipulation of rated item-difficulty permitted a direct attack on the widely discussed problem of item-selection in Rock's procedure. Notwithstanding the control of item-selection, the performance of Ss in the drop-out condition did not differ significantly from the performance of Ss that learned in the ordinary way, with repetition. The geometric distribution provided a good fit to the obtained distributions of waiting times to the first correct response to an item. This finding accords nicely with an all-or-none view on associative learning.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 15, 1967
- Accession Number
- AD0657933
Entities
People
- John Van Laer
- Salvatore A. Pizzuro
Organizations
- University of Washington