Reversal and Nonreversal Shift Learning in Children as a Function of Two Types of Pretraining

Abstract

Nursery school children were given one of two types of pretraining prior to learning either a reversal shift, a nonreversal shift, or a control shift. Relevant pretraining required learning verbal labels for one or both of the stimulus dimensions in the discrimination tasks. An irrelevant pretraining control required learning labels for one or two stimulus dimensions other than those present in the discriminations. Pretraining had no effect on later shift learning. Furthermore, there were no differences in ease of learning the three types of shift. Comparisons were made with the results of other studies which also indicated a failure of young children to use available labels as mediators of their choice behavior.