RETARDATE DISCRIMINATION LEARNING FOLLOWING DIFFERENTIAL CONDITIONING OF THE CHOICE-POINT STIMULI.

In an attempt to partial out the classical and instrumental components in discrimination learning, one group of retarded children (C) was presented two identical goal boxes for either one or ten trials. One contained a stimulus pattern and reinforcement and the other a different pattern but no reinforcement. Ss were instructed to find the candy by opening one box. Following conditioning, six discrimination trials were given with these same stimuli atop and within goal boxes. Forty one-trial and 40 ten-trial problems were administered. Another group (D) received standard discrimination training for a like number of trials and problems. Group C's first trial discrimination performance was greater than chance but less than that of group D. Significant effects were found for inter-problem learning, number of pretraining trials, and test trials.

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