Effects of Non-Anticipation and Anticipation Procedures upon Paired-Associate Learning in Unmixed and Mixed List Designs

Two experiments compared verbal PA learning by the standard anticipation technique with learning by a non-anticipation method in which immediate confirmation O- correct responding was eliminated. Most previous investigations have found that learning by the latter procedure is superior to learning by the usual anticipation method. In Exp. I, which employed an unmixed list design, no differences in learning were obtained between the two methods at either of two levels of list difficulty. However, Exp. II, using the same materials in a mixed list design, showed superior learning of items presented by the non-anticipation method regardless of the difficulty of the list. The conflicting results of the two experiments suggest that evidence for superior verbal PA learning by the non-anticipation method may depend, at least in part, upon the list design employed.