Stimulus “Fractionation” in Paired-Associate Learning

It has been suggested that Ss may use only a portion of the nominal stimulus as a cue in paired-associate learning. Non-overlapping consonant trigram stimuli were used in such learning with numerals as responses. When the pairs had been learned, individual letters were presented and Ss were required to respond with the appropriate number. Results support the hypothesis that Ss had learned to respond to only part of the stimulus compound. Responses to letters which had been in the initial and final positions in the trigrams were correct significantly more often than responses to medial letters.