Some Effects of Inflating Information Feedback on the Acquisition of a Discrete Lever-Positioning Response

Abstract

160 military trainees who were randomly placed into four equal groups were taught to displace a lever to an initial target by an error training procedure. Unknown to these Ss, the target position shifted; Ss were then trained to move the lever to this new target. During this phase of countertraining (CT), information feedback (IF) was inflated by different factors for each of the three experimental groups. The control group in this stage received the same unamplified IF which all groups were given during initial training. Ss receiving exaggerated IF neither engaged in more hunting behavior for the CT target, nor oscillated around it over and above those Ss not given misproportioned IF. Individual differences in responding were greater for the control group than any of the experimental groups. The second half of countertraining for all groups was marked by a progressive deterioration in S-alignment. The most pronounced effects of IF distortion did not occur during the first CT trial as expected. All Ss approached at the same rate a common asymptote as a limit. There was an absence of any powerful tendency to perseverate in moving to the initial target during countertraining. The cognitive relationship established by some of the groups between the IF- and R-scale did not differ suggesting that some of the transformations adopted were psychologically meaningless.