The acquired distinctiveness of cues: the role of discriminative verbal responses in facilitating the acquisition of discriminative motor responses.

A study of the facilitative effects of the acquisition of discriminative verbal responses upon the acquisition of motor responses to the same stimuli. Three matched groups of 15 subjects each learned a 12 figure-syllable paired-associate list and an appropriate motor response to the same list of figures alone. The group which had mastered discrimination between pairs of similar figures by means of nonsense syllable responses acquired discriminative motor responses to the same list of figures significantly more rapidly than groups which received only one and four verbal learning trials. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)