Department of Psychiatry, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Mem Cognit. 1977 Mar;5(2):177-86. doi: 10.3758/BF03197360.
Recognition tasks in which the items have been assigned to one and only to one response category throughout an experiment typically reveal that the functions relating reaction time and positive set size are negatively accelerated and have slopes which decrease significantly with practice. The present experiments were designed to determine whether this practice effect is specific to the individual items practiced or if it depends, at least partially, on relations built up among the positive set items. The results permit rejection of both alternatives. In the extreme case tested, it was found that, after prolonged practice with the same items composing nested positive sets, these items could be replaced with unpracticed ones without producingany significant change in the effect of set size, reaction times, or error levels. Absence of change in overall reaction times in combination with stability of slope values leads to the conclusion that not only do those practice effects which are related to the set-size effect transfer exceedingly well to unpracticed items, but practice effects on all other stages involved in item recognition also show almost total transfer to unpracticed items. It is concluded that, under the conditions of these experiments, the gain (through practice) in efficiency in processing the stimulus is independent of the stimulus.
在整个实验过程中，将项目分配到一个且仅一个响应类别中的识别任务通常表明，与反应时间和正集大小相关的函数呈负加速，并且随着练习而显著减小。本实验旨在确定这种练习效应是特定于所练习的单个项目，还是至少部分取决于正集项目之间建立的关系。结果否定了这两种选择。在测试的极端情况下，发现经过长时间练习具有嵌套正集的相同项目后，用未练习的项目替换这些项目不会对集大小、反应时间或错误水平的影响产生任何显著变化。整体反应时间没有变化，斜率值稳定，这导致这样的结论：不仅与集大小效应相关的那些练习效应极好地转移到未练习的项目，而且与项目识别中涉及的所有其他阶段相关的练习效应也几乎完全转移到未练习的项目。得出的结论是，在这些实验的条件下，处理刺激的效率的提高（通过练习）与刺激无关。
