The effect of change in stimuli on the transfer of dimensional pretraining to the discrimination learning of kindergarten children.

Kindergarten children were given verbal pretaining prior to a simultaneous discrimination learning task under 1 or 2 stimulus conditions. For half the children, the stimuli were changed from the pretaining task to the criterion task; for the other half, the stimuli were identical in the 2 tasks. During pretaining, the children learned to label the values of the dimension that would be either relevant, constant, or irrelevant in discrimination learning. When the stimuli were identical in 2 tasks, pretaining produced significant facilitation and interference effects in discrimination performance. The pretaining effects in the changed-stimulus condition were greatly attenuated and nonsignificant. The relation of these results to earlier findings and to studies of dimensional attention in general is discussed.