Paired-Associate Learning

In the case of paired-associate learning, the learner develops an association between one item, usually a word, called the stimulus, and another item (also usually a word, although it can be a number or a concept) called a response. For example, in a laboratory setting, an individual might be given one word and a number that are apparently unrelated, and told to pair the two together in a series of recall exercises. A real-life example of paired associate learning might be that of learning someone's name. The face is the stimulus, and the response is that of the other person's name (Dewey 2007). In learning the association, the individual first experiences stimulus discrimination when encountering the new face upon sight, then is engaged in response learning, when told the other person's name. The stimulus-response association occurs when the two people meet again and greet one another by name.

Of course, people often have trouble remembering names of people whom they meet briefly. One way to circumvent this problem is to create a mnemonic device for the new person's name, such as remembering that someone's name is 'George' because he has white hair like George Washington. This is similar to how subjects may use mental shorthand to remember unrelated word or number pairs in an experiment by making sentences or personal associations that link the stimulus and response. In general, creating such associations makes it much easier to remember associations between words and successfully respond to a stimulus with the correct response. This form of learning is called natural language association, and tends to reduce the bias that favors the ease of remembering the first rather than the second word -- it is easier to respond with the response than to recall the original stimulus. Also, "different people make different associations, and research suggests that people do best with their own associations, rather than those supplied by an experimenter" (Dewey 2007).

Works Cited

Dewey, Russ. (2007). Paired associate learning. Psych Web.

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