Meaningfulness in the Associative Stage of Paired-Associate Learning

An experiment employing seventy-two undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology courses was performed to test the hypothesis that the effect of meaningfulness on the stimulus and on the response will be equivalent in paired-associate learning with the elimination of the response-recall stage of associative learning. Dissyllables taken from Noble’s list (1960) were paired with single digit numbers to comprise the paired-associate terms. An attempt was made to eliminate the response-recall stage of paired-associate learning by making the correct responses available to the S at the time of stimulus presentation. Two control groups learned paired-associates in the usual manner. The effect of meaningfulness on stimulus versus response with the elimination of the response-recall stage of associative learning is not significant. This result may be viewed as confirming the hypothesis if the attempted elimination of the response-recall stage was successful. Significant results were obtained for the variable of meaningfulness, replicating the finding that terms of high meaningfulness are easier to learn than terms of low meaningfulness