Two experiments are reported, the first with 30 young test-wise rhesus monkeys and the second with 30 first grade children, on transfer of relational responding on a series of discrimination learning and transposition problems which varied in degree of stimulus similarity across problems. In the first, monkeys showed superior transfer and transposition when problems contained common stimulus elements and when the stimuli were highly discriminable. Transfer across problems which did not contain common stimulus elements in the first two problems resulted in the most errors and did not yield significant proportions of transposers. In the second, the children also showed enhanced transfer and transposition to the highly discriminable dimensions but there were significant reductions in errors and significant proportions of transposers to all stimulus combinations on the second problem. Ninety percent of the children did not make any errors in either phase of the third and fourth problems. The results were interpreted in terms of the acquisition of abstract or nonspecific perceptual learning sets.
Stimulus similarity affects patterning discrimination learning.
