Intraverbal stimulus-response reversibility: Fluency, familiarity effects, and implications for stimulus equivalence

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Psychology
• Language Acquisition
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Learners often use flashcards for vocabulary acquisition.
• The directionality of learning (e.g., stimulus-response pairs) may influence learning efficiency.
• Understanding verbal behavior and stimulus equivalence is crucial for effective language learning strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of reversing stimulus-response relations in a computerized flashcard program on learning English-French word pairs.
• To assess the symmetry of learning and its effect on accuracy and response rate.
• To relate findings to theories of fluency, verbal behavior, and stimulus equivalence.

Main Methods:

• English-speaking subjects learned 16 English-French word pairs using the Think Fast flashcard program.
• Phase 1 involved learning word pairs in one direction (French to English or English to French).
• Phase 2 reversed the stimulus and response items, and performance was measured.

Main Results:

• Reversing the learning direction in Phase 2 significantly decreased accuracy and correct response rates for most subjects.
• This negative effect was more pronounced when learning from English to French (EF-2 condition).
• Initial learning of reversed relations (symmetry) was poor, with subjects averaging only 29% correct.

Conclusions:

• The direction of initial learning significantly impacts the ability to learn reversed stimulus-response relations.
• Poor symmetry suggests that learning is not always bidirectional without explicit training in both directions.
• Findings have implications for designing effective language learning software and understanding verbal learning processes.