Transfer of Serial Position Effect to Paired-Associate Learning

The experiment was designed to evaluate the role of position in serial learning. In the position learning task, subjects learned two serial lists presented alternately, then learned a subsequent paired associate list consisting of items of the previously learned serial list. The paired associate list contained three types of pairs; the same position-same pair, different position-same pair, and different position-different pair. The findings of the experiment supported the position hypothesis that if position is the cue for the recall of the item in a serial list, then, a subsequent paired associate list that is made up of the two previously learned serial lists will produce maximum positive transfer for the same position-same pair items. For the pairs that were constructed so that items occupying the same ordinal position in the serial lists were paired but were moved to a new position in the paired associate list, i.e., different position-same pair, the percentage of correct response was significantly less than the same position-same pair items and significantly greater than different position-different pair items; F=222.18, df=2. The latter pairs were constructed of syllables from the serial lists but were in a new ordinal position and were paired with a syllable that had a different ordinal position. The Tukey multiple comparison test for the differences between the three types of items was significant at ∝=.01; CR=1016.59. Furthermore, the linear trend in the data was striking and yielded an orthogonal contrast that was highly significant; F=443.83. The quadratic function was not significant, F=.53. The findings contradict both the remote association and sequential hypothesis in serial learning. The highly significant F for the different levels of position was F=222.1826, df=2 is reflected in Ω2=.34, which indicated that 34% of variation is accounted for by the different levels of position. The results provided evidence that it is not only same position items that caused positive transfer from serial lists to a paired associate list, but also the same paired items that are in a new ordinal position