Psychological monographs Author:American Psychological Association Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. RETENTION AS A FUNCTION OF THE DEGREE OF LEARNING In the second series of experiments, the condition that was varied was the degree of the original lear... more »ning. The ten subjects of the second group served throughout these experiments, each learning at least 44 syllable series, besides preliminary practice trials. The series and the degrees of learning were distributed according to the following scheme. 1. Altogether we used four degrees of learning. A. 100% learning, with the same conditions as in the first series of experiments. B. 150% learning, in which the subject was given one half of the number of presentations in addition to what was required for the first errorless anticipation of a series. Thus, if a series was learned in 10 presentations, 5 more were given. If 9, also 5. C. 67% learning. The average number of presentations was calculated for each subject after he had learned 20 series besides the preliminary trials. In 67% learning, he was given two-thirds of that number of presentations. (The average number was previously taken to be the total number minus one, i.e., the number of presentations in which there was actual anticipation. In the present case, the total number was used.) D. 33% learning. By the same process of computation, one.third of the total number of presentations was given. 2. In 100%, 67% and 33% learning, the intervals used were the same five as in the first series of experiments. Two of these were omitted for 150% learning, but four others were added. So there were seven intervals for 150% learning, viz., 2 hrs., 3 hrs., 4 hrs., 6 hrs., 12 hrs., 1 day and 2 days. The 2.hr. and 3-hr. intervals were arbitrarily chosen after they had been tried outon several subjects. The object was to select such intervals as would f...« less