VERBAL LEARNING

UNIT III
 VERBAL LEARNING
• VERBAL LEARNING
• NATURE
• MATERIAL
• EXPERIMENTAL METHODS
• BASIC VARIABLES IN VERBAL LEARNING EXPERIMENTS
• LEARNER’S CHARACTERISTICS
• CONDITIONS OF PRACTICE
• CONCEPT LEARNING AND ITS EXPERIMENTAL PARADIGM.
 DEFINITION
• the process of learning about verbal stimuli and responses, such as
letters, digits, nonsense syllables, or words. …APA DICTIONARY

• Cofer 1984….the term verbal learning denotes a field of inquiry in

which the focus of interest lies in the phenomena and processes by
which individuals come, through practice, to link two verbal items
together, to learn the sequence in which a set of verbal items occurs,
to differentiate between verbal items or to recall a set of items
without regard for the order in which they occurred originally.
 NON-SENSE SYLLABLES
• HERMANN EBINGHAUS (1890s) for the first time create NSS (CVC) for
the purpose of studying memory scientifically. This weas done to
control the effect of previous learning and associations on the present
learning. EG. TOZ, LAV, AOR
• Pandhari pandey has created list of NSS in hindi
• These are in the pattern of CVC – CONSONANT VOWEL CONSONANT
• These are also called trigrams.
 MATERIAL
• MEANINGFUL
• J.A.GLAZE ,1928 proved with the help of rating method that even NSS
were not completely meaningless, that is, they could have varying
association values. Thereafter, meaningful words came to be used in
verbal learning experiments. Dor aut aix qek have different association
values.
• Many psychologists like thorndike and Noble produced lists of
meaningful words based on their association values. It was believed that
the more the frequency of occurrence of any word the greater its
association value.
• Prose, poem.
 MIXED( meaningful material in an
un- structured sequence)
• In such a material the words are meaningful but they are presented in
such a sequence in the sentence that they do not make any sense.
• Sequential Dependency was controlled in such experiments.
Sequential dependency means the probability of occurrence of a
word after another word. The greater the sequential dependency in a
sentence, the easier it would be to learn it.
• Eg. The then last lake there whether insurance be the is into closed
went sight had order in dust could what terms friends boy
government.
 Methods
1 ) Free Recall
• subjects are free to recall the presented verbal material in any order.
• Simple
• Presented in any manner- through memory drum, read out , subject reads it
himself.
• After going trough the list once subject is free to recall it in any manner.
• Recall can be orally or written.
• One presentation of list is one trial.
• There may be one trial or multiple
• The number of items correctly recalled becomes the score of the subject.
2) Serial Learning –
The subjects have to recall the presented material in the same order in which it has
been presented.

A ) The method of complete presentation – subject is given the entire

material all at once and he is free to learn it in any way that suits him.
He may give greater time to certain areas and less to others, but he has
to recall the material in the specified serial order. Eg. a,b,c,d.
 SERIAL ANTICIPATION
METHOD
Anticipation method – In this method the subject is presented the
verbal material one by one and he has to learn it with the help of the
anticipation method where each trial is test of retention as well as a
chance to learn. For eg. the subject has to learn a list of NSS as a part of
the experiment. The list may be(usually it is) presented on the memory
drum, which has a slit to display only one NSS at a time. There is XXX
symbol at the beginning of the list. In the first trial the subject is shown
the entire list. Thereafter, the actual recording of recalled items is done.
On seeing XXX the subject has to recall the first item, on seeing the first
item the subject has to recall the second item and so on. This procedure is
followed till the subject is able to recall the entire list for two errorless
trials.
 PAIRED ASSOCIATE
LEARNING
• In this method the subject is presented with pairs of verbal items. The verbal
items may be meaningful or NSS. Initially, the subject is shown all the pairs of
items one by one. Thereafter, in each of the following trials, the subject is
presented with just one of the verbal items of the pair and is asked to recall the
other. Thus, each trial becomes a trial for recall as well as learning. As, when the
subject is unable to recall the response item , she is shown the correct answer.
The verbal stimuli are presented in a random order. the procedure is followed till
the subject is able to recall all the response words correctly for two consecutive
times.
• SAD – QUL RAN - SEB
• MAN – RUN
• QUW - TUZ
 Factors affecting learning
• Attention, interest, motivation, memory, intelligence
• Content simple, association,
• Factors related to material – meaningfulness, affectivity… emotional
content
• Factors related to subject-
• Factors related to learning method or condition…
 Conditions of Practice
Massed versus Distributed –Distributed practice (also known as spaced
repetition or spaced practice) is a learning strategy, where practice is
broken up into a number of short sessions – over a longer period of
time. Humans and animals learn items in a list more effectively when
they are studied in several sessions spread out over a long period of
time, rather than studied repeatedly in a short period of time.
Ebbinghaus(1885), on the basis of his initial experiments concluded
that distributed practice is better for verbal learning. Hoveland (1938),
also proved the superiority of the distributed practice, on the basis of
his experiments.
 Massed versus Distributed

• Underwood and Shultz have demonstrated two stages of verbal

learning. In stage 1 the subject learns to differentiate the items from
other items. In stage 2 the subject establishes its association with
some stimulus. He further stated that a lot of interference could take
place during the stage 1 of discrimination. Thus, verbal learning could
take place with much ease during distributed practice.
 Whole Versus Part method

• Whole method procedure demands the continuous repetition of an entire body of

material until the desired stage of mastery is achieved. Part method procedure demands
an initial mastery of the definite sections of the material and the final connection of these
different sections in proper serial order.
• The pure part method and progressive part method –
• It demands initial mastery of the first section of the body of material. After this section is
learned, the subject masters the second part, following which the two parts are combined
and learned as one. The third section is learned thereafter and all the three parts are
combined together. This procedure is continued till the entire material is learnt properly.
Which method is better for learning depends on the nature and amount of
material.
• In case of a long verbal material or material related to two or more subjects, part method
is found to be better.
 Learner’s Characteristics

Memory system
The greater the frequency of prior experience with the learning
material, the more easily and faster, the subject is able to learn it.
The greater the recency of the learning experience, while recall, the
better is the retention of the learnt material.
Miller(1956) gave the magical number of 7+/- 2, 5-9. the greater the
memory span, the greater, the recall.
Some people like to keep one kind of material in their memory while
others prefer some other type. Eg. numbers, alphabets, etc.
• Motivation :-
• According to D’Amato, the instructions that are given to the subject
while experimenting become a source of motivation for learning. In
incidental learning, where instructions are absent, not much learning
takes place.
• Affectivity and Arousal – verbal material having emotional
connotations cause arousal in subjects. Words having high emotional
content are learnt better.
 Concept learning
• What is a concept?
According to Baron, “Concepts are mental categories for objects,
events, experiences or ideas that are similar to one another in one or
more respects.”
Characteristics of concepts:-
1) Concepts are symbolic
2) important for higher mental processes
 PROCESS
• Process of concept formation
• It involves two processes:-
• Primarily Generalization and discrimination, and also perception, comparison
and analysis and naming.
• Types of concepts :- concepts may be simple and complicated. Simple
concepts are those in which concepts are formed and identified on the basis
of one characteristic. For eg. identifying and putting all spherical things
together.
• Complicated or complex concepts are those that are identified on the basis
of two or more characteristics. These are of many types:
• Conjunctive, disjunctive, relational, conditional and biconditional
 TYPES
• Conjunctive concepts:- those concepts where two or more concepts should be
present at the same time. Eg. all round white objects. It means all objects that have
both the characteristics of being round and one can be kept in this.
• Disjunctive concepts:- those concepts where the presence of any one of the many
specified characteristics is enough is called a disjunctive concept. For eg. all things
that are round or white or are both round and white are called disjunctive concepts.
• Relational concepts :- such concepts reflect the relationship of the chatracteristics
of the concept.
• Conditional concepts:- in such concepts there is some specified condition with
regard to the concept.
• Biconditional concepts:- in such concepts there is a double condtion with regard to
the concept.
 References
• https://dictionary.apa.org/verbal-learning