Learning to Read Words: Effects of Overlearning and Similarity on Stimulus Selection

Abstract

Kindergarten children needed more trials to learn a list of similar than dissimilar words but made fewer over-generalization errors on subsequent transfer tasks. A third group of children, trained on the dissimilar list, was given overlearning trials to make up for the additional training trials needed by the similar group. While the overlearning and similar groups did not differ on over-generalization errors, both made fewer errors than were made by the dissimilar group. The authors conclude that over-generalization errors fade with over-learning and should not unduly alarm teachers.