DISCRIMINATION LEARNING AND SHIFTS AS A FUNCTION OF DIMENSIONAL PREFERENCE AND DEGREE OF TRAINING

4 to 6 years old children were given a card-sorting task in order to measure S's dimensional preference. They were trained a discrimination task to one of the 3 training levels, and were shifted to an intradimensional (ID) or an extradimensional (ED) task. The sorting and discrimination tasks consisted of form and color dimensions with 2 stimulus values, but different stimulus values were used in each task. The results showed that (a) the Ss trained on their preferred dimensions learned the discrimination task faster than the Ss trained on their unpreferred dimensions, (b) for the Ss trained on their preferred dimensions, the ID shift was easier than the ED shift, but no difference was found for the 5s trained on their unpreferred dimensions, and (c) the effect of dimensional preference on discrimination shifts was not dependent upon the level of original training. The findings were discussed in relation to previous studies and 2-stage theories of discrimination learning