Newell Ben R, Bright James E H
Department of Psychology, University College, London, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol A. 2002 Oct;55(4):1109-26. doi: 10.1080/02724980244000062.
Four experiments examined the claim that cross-format transfer in invariant learning is reliant solely on the presence of repetition structure in study and test strings (Stadler, Warren, & Lesch, 2000). Experiments 1, 2, and 3 used strings with no repetitions and found significant cross-format transfer in combination with a non-significant transfer decrement--no significant difference between same- and changed-format conditions. Further investigation of the basis of the role of repetition structure revealed an emphasis on the perceptual salience of test stimuli (Experiment 4). Our results contrast with those of Stadler et al. and suggest that under the conditions we employed invariant learning is not highly sensitive to changes in the perceptual characteristics of stimuli and therefore is inaccurately described as hyperspecific. We suggest that the term hyperspecific be reserved for cases in which minor format changes result in significant performance impairments--for example, typographical effects in implicit memory.
四项实验检验了这样一种说法，即不变学习中的跨格式迁移仅仅依赖于学习和测试字符串中重复结构的存在（施塔德勒、沃伦和勒施，2000）。实验1、2和3使用了无重复的字符串，并发现了显著的跨格式迁移，同时伴随着不显著的迁移递减——相同格式和变化格式条件之间没有显著差异。对重复结构作用基础的进一步研究揭示了对测试刺激的感知显著性的强调（实验4）。我们的结果与施塔德勒等人的结果形成对比，并表明在我们采用的条件下，不变学习对刺激感知特征的变化不太敏感，因此被不准确地描述为超特异性。我们建议，“超特异性”一词应保留用于描述那些微小格式变化导致显著性能受损的情况——例如，内隐记忆中的排版效应。
