Learning and transfer of identity-difference relationships by infants*

Seven-month-old infants were presented three successive two-choice discrimination learning problems in which the stimuli were pairs of toys. On each trial, one pair of two identical toys and one pair of two different toys were presented. The infants were reinforced for fixating the positive pair by hearing a tape-recorded story. The relationship (either identity or difference) among the members of the positive pair was constant for the first two problems, and the percentage of total fixation time directed to the positive pairs increased over trials. Infants for whom the positive intrapair relationship was reversed for Problem 3 experienced an immediate decrease in their level of performance, whereas no such decrement occurred for the others. These results were interpreted as indicating that the infants had learned to attend and respond to intrapair relationships.

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