An Information Processing Theory of Verbal Learning

A theory of some elementary forms of human symbolic learnning: memorization, discrimination, association, and attention direction. The theory is concerned with mental activity at the level of the processing of information symbols, which are the basic units manipulated. The precise statement of the theory is given in th language of a digital computer, specifically as a set of programs in IPL-V (Information Processing Language), called EPAM (Elementary Perceiver and Memorizer). The paper deals generally with information structures and processes for discrimination and association learning, and specifically with behavior in the standard rote-learning task. A number of implications of the theory in rote-learning situations are explored, and comparisons are drawn between the behavior of human subjects in these situations and the behavior of the EPAM model.