Educational films can be considered as everyday examples of stimulus predifferentiation, in which the individual gets preliminary information to be used in subsequent learning. The student who sees a film describing the various parts of a microscope is likely to be better prepared to learn the requisite skills when confronted with the instrument itself. In laboratory studies of stimulus predifferentiation, the subject is given experience with a particular stimulus situation ahead of time; later he is asked to learn new responses in the same situation. In one illustrative study, subjects first practiced labelling four different lights and then later were asked to learn to press selectively one of four switches, each connected to one light. The rate at which they learned the appropriate pressing reactions was related to how well they had learned to label the lights.

The results of a large number of experiments covering a variety of stimulus predifferentiation techniques suggest that when a learner has an opportunity to become generally acquainted with an environment, he retains some information about its different components that prepares him for learning to make new responses to them. Various explanations have been offered to account for this facilitation; some investigators suggest that the process of labelling enhances the distinctiveness of environmental stimuli for the labeller; others hold that perceptual acquaintance can more sharply differentiate an environment into its component parts for the perceiver or that it may encourage appropriate responses of observing or attending. Nevertheless, no single process has been identified as fundamental in stimulus predifferentiation. Perhaps a number of these processes operate in different combinations from one stimulus-predifferentiation transfer experiment to another, each process representing a different method by which a learner can become familiar with the details of his environment.

Transposition

Another phenomenon that has received considerable attention in theories of transfer of training is called transposition. An initial report of transposition came from a study in which chickens were trained by rewards to respond to the darker of two gray squares. After this discrimination task was learned, the chickens were shown the originally rewarded gray square along with one that was still darker. They seemed to prefer the darkest gray to the square that had been previously rewarded. This finding was interpreted to support the hypothesis that the birds had initially learned to respond to a relationship (what a human being would call the concept “darker”) and that this response to a relationship had been transposed or transferred to the new discrimination. This relational interpretation later was challenged by theorists who offered a formulation to show, on the basis of principles of stimulus generalization, how a response to a relational stimulus could be explained by assuming that organisms do indeed respond to the absolute properties of the stimuli. Both explanations were found to be too simple for the variety of findings obtained with transposition studies. As a result, the interest of many investigators shifted away from demonstrating the relative merits of absolute versus relational interpretations to identifying conditions that seem to influence transposition behaviour. Within this context, newer, more sophisticated formulations have been proposed that consider both the absolute and relational characteristics of the stimuli in transposition studies.

Learning to learn

When people are asked to learn successive lists of words, their performance tends to improve from one task to another so that much less time is commonly required to learn, say, the tenth list than was needed for mastering the first list. This improvement suggests that information beyond the specific content of lists of words is also learned. It would seem as if the subjects are learning how to learn; that is, they seem to be acquiring learning sets, or expectancies, that transfer from list to list to produce continually improving performance.

Some of the most intensive work on learning sets has been carried out with monkeys that were learning how to solve several hundred discrimination problems in succession. In each problem, the monkey learned which one of two objects (for example, a bottle cap and a cookie cutter) consistently contained a piece of food. Although the solution of each successive problem required the animals to discriminate between two previously unfamiliar objects, performance tended to improve on successive tasks; the monkeys made increasing numbers of correct choices on the second trial of each problem as the process continued. Manifestly there was no cue to indicate the correct choice on the first trial of any specific problem. If the animal responded correctly on the first trial, then on the second trial it would only have to choose the same object to be correct thereafter; if the monkey made an error on the first trial, then the other object would inexorably be the one that should be chosen next. During their efforts to solve the first few problems the monkeys were correct approximately half the time on the second attempt to solve each problem. This success increased to an average of 80 percent correct after each animal had solved 100 problems, to 88 percent after 200 correct solutions, and eventually to 95 percent after 300. Thus, after a long series of separate tasks, all of the same type, the monkey’s first response to the next problem usually provided sufficient information for the animal to make the correct choice.

Since each of the successive discrimination problems was different, what actually was being transferred from problem to problem? In these discrimination problems, the monkeys seemed to have several items of information to learn in addition to which one of the two objects contained the rewarding bit of food. The animals apparently had to learn to pay attention to that part of their environment where the objects were placed. To make the correct choice, it would seem that a monkey would have to learn to abandon any preference it might exhibit for objects on either the left or the right; indeed, the animals usually did show such preferences. (The correct object was shifted from side to side in a random sequence to control for these preferences.) Ostensibly, the monkeys also had to learn that one object consistently contained food while the other was always empty. Although these learning sets by themselves would not serve to identify the correct object in each new discrimination problem, it seems likely that they could help the animal locate the reward very rapidly by eliminating initially unprofitable responses.

Reversal learning

In reversal learning, the individual first learns to make a discrimination, such as choosing a black object in a black–white discrimination problem, and then is supposed to learn to reverse his choice—i.e., to choose the white object. Such reversals tend to be difficult for most learners since there are negative transfer effects; e.g., the individual tends to persist in responding to the black object that was originally correct. Eventually, however, one’s tendency to make the originally learned selection typically becomes weaker, and he makes the competing response (e.g., to white) more frequently until a point is reached where it is almost consistently evoked. Reversal learning can be accomplished very rapidly when a laboratory animal, such as a monkey, is presented with a series of reversal-learning problems in which the same sequence of shifts is repeated (as when black is initially correct, then white, then black, then white, and so on). After extended reversal training, some animals are able to make the next reversal in the sequence in one trial. They behave as if they have mastered the abstract concept of alternation or of regular sequence.

The speed with which representatives of a given species of animal, including human beings, can be taught to make a reversal of this kind seems to be related to the place biologists assign them in a hierarchy of evolutionary development. On first being exposed to a reversal-learning problem, normally competent adult humans who can use language are likely to achieve a solution with great rapidity. Monkeys can learn to perform equally well after a relatively longer series of reversal-learning tasks; but isopods such as pill bugs or sow bugs, small relatives of crabs and shrimp, have such primitive brains that they seem to be unable to improve their performance at all during a series of reversal-learning tasks.