Task for the Study of Perceptual Learning and Performance Variables

Abstract

In order to carry out the experimental program, suggested in outline form in the first article of a series, dealing with the effects of experience on perceptual behavior (I), it was necessary to discover or develop a number of tasks sensitive to the major learning and performance variables and easily adaptable to experimental needs. In working with individual Ss in this laboratory, the cards from the Rorschach Test have been found useful (2). When groups of Ss are to be tested, inverted alphabet printing, suggested by Kimble (7), can be used, although the motor component is appreciable and the material is familiar. A task, developed by DuBois and Bunch (4), can be used when one wishes to work with classes or other groups. This task requires S to indicate which two of four half-shaded squares are identical. The authors recommend use of 30 such large squares per page of work, and as many pages as one wishes. It was felt that another paper-and-pencil test was needed as a companion to the DuBois-Bunch task in order to be able to generalize results. This new task should be novel, require relatively little in the way of motor work, provide a permanent record, be sensitive to important variables, and lend itself readily to experimental manipulation. After some search and study of possibilities, it was decided to adapt tests which had been developed by Tsai and Partington, which tests are similar to puzzles often appearing in children's activity books and comics. In both of these tests, a series of numbers or letters is scattered randomly over a page. S's task is to trace a line as rapidly as possible through the numbers or letters in their proper sequence, beginning with 1 or a. T sal '1 had found that the time required to complete his form of the test was significantly related to pilot washout rate in the Chinese Air Force, and also, to scores on the United States army drop board test for truck drivers (6). Partington (8, 9) recommended both the letter and number forms of his test for detecting brain injury and multiple sclerosis. Cozan (3) found Partington's test useful in industrial mental ability testing. The Tsai-Partington Numbers Test, as the present modification is called, is a booklet of several pages. The first page gives the instructions to S and a