Behaviorists explain both serial learning and paired associates learning through stimulus-response associations.
In other words, serial learning is explained as a series of stimulus-response connections between adjacent words. For example, in a list of three words, (apple, hat, broom), apple serves as the stimulus and hat as its response. Also, hat serves as a stimulus and broom as its response.
Paired associates learning is also explained as a series of stimulus-response connections between the items in the pair. For example, in a pair of words consisting of (airplane-bunny), airplane serves as the stimulus for bunny, which is the response.
Young (1959, 1961) sought to test the idea that stimulus-response connections were actually being formed through serial learning. She gave all of her participants the same serial list of words to learn. Then she broke her participants up into two groups. All of the participants did a paired associates task using the same words as were used in the serial learning task. There was a distinct difference between the pairs given to Group A and Group B, however.
What could Young have done to test the idea that stimulus-response connections were actually formed in the serial learning task (and thus would still be “active” in the paired associates task)? Come up with a method, and be specific. Assume you have access to 100 participants. Use the following word list: CUTTING, EAGER, POLITE, AWKWARD, MORBID, CERTAIN, OBLONG, INTENSE. Write your method in terms of a “to-do” list. In other words, what is the first thing you would do, the second, etc., to design and run this experiment, and what would the participants in your study do? (HINT: Thinking about what you did in the learning experiment may help you.)
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