Q.Explain the procedures for studying verbal learning.

Verbal learning is a form of learning distinct from conditioning and unique to human beings, because it depends on the acquisition and association of words and language. Human beings come to know about objects, events, and their properties largely in terms of words, and these words in turn become linked to one another through learning. To study verbal learning under controlled laboratory conditions, psychologists typically use lists composed of nonsense syllables (meaningless combinations like YOL or RUV), unfamiliar words, familiar words, sentences, or paragraphs, and rely mainly on three experimental methods.

In paired-associates learning — closely related to ordinary S-S and S-R learning — a list of paired items is prepared, with the first word of each pair serving as the stimulus and the second as the response to be learned; a learner is shown the pairs together first, and then, in successive trials, is shown just the stimulus term and must produce the correct response, being shown the correct answer whenever they fail. The number of trials needed to reach a criterion of giving every response correctly in one trial is the standard measure used.

In serial learning, a list is presented and the participant must reproduce all the items in the same order in which they were originally presented. The typical procedure, the serial anticipation method, presents one item at a time; the participant must anticipate (produce) the next item before it appears, and each item, once given, becomes the stimulus for anticipating the item that follows it, continuing until the whole list can be correctly anticipated without error. …