Perceptual isolation and position judgment

Prior findings showed that perceptual isolation of one item in a low similarity list facilitated total-list learning of order. A reconstruction procedure in which a spatial framework was provided during test trials, was used in those studies. In order to extend the generality of those findings, a position judgment procedure was used in the present experiments; subjects estimated ordinal position of each item following each of six study trials in which the 12 CVC items were displayed in a fixed sequence. That to-be-learned sequence was defined temporally in Experiment 1, which failed to corroborate prior findings, but was presented simultaneously and spatially in Experiment 2, which did. Interpretation focused on conditions necessary for finding homologous effects for supplied anchors and isolating stimuli, suggesting that absolute judgment can be regarded as a special case of serial learning, and vice versa, and on circumstances allowing utilization of an isolating stimulus as an organizational device.