Learning to Identify Nonverbal Sounds: An Application of a Computer as a Teaching Machine

Abstract

The procedures of automated instruction—continual interrogation and overt response, immediate knowledge of results, presentation of successive items conditional upon previous performance, learner-controlled pacing of the lesson, and so forth—were applied to the task of learning to identify multidimensional, nonverbal sounds. These procedures produced results that are comparable to those obtained previously with conventional training methods. Certain of the central features of automated instruction were found to hinder learning in the task studied.