Several methods for teaching serial position sequences to monkeys

Three keys were available for monkeys to press. The objective was to teach the animals to press the keys in sequences up to 10 members in length. With fading procedures, a light that cued the correct key at a given serial member of the sequence faded out slightly each time the animal selected it, and became slightly brighter after the animal made an error at that sequence member. The correct keys were faded out, starting from the end of the sequence and proceeding toward the beginning. With control procedures, the cue lights were turned off suddenly, rather than being faded gradually. In almost every instance, the animals learned a longer series of unlighted key positions with the fading procedures than they did when each key-light was turned off suddenly. Also, requiring the animals to press a series of keys cued by lights before they could reach the sequence members they were to learn hampered them in learning the later serial members. By using several different sequences, it was possible to replicate these findings within the individual animal.     

Like and cross modality responses in normal and subnormal children

Experiments which investigated response behaviour in imbeciles and normals, in a conflict situation between a general verbal instruction and direct stimuli, were carried out. It was found that combined verbal-motor responses did not give better results than either verbal or motor responses alone. Results in accordance with the general instruction were significantly better if the subnormal children responded in a different modality from the one in which the signals were given. While normals and imbeciles differed markedly in their ability to perform the tasks in like-modality trials, this difference was less apparent in cross modality responses.