Learning changes in the recognition, repetition, and free recall of pseudowords

Acquisition of a pair of three-syllabic (11-phoneme) pseudowords associated with meaningless ideographs was examined across 15 trials on three tasks. For each word, an ideograph-prompted recall was succeeded by the identification of each constituent syllable among two foils, ending with two repetitions of the recorded pseudoword. The words were alternated throughout the experiment. Subjects verbal productions were phonetically transcribed and scored for segmental and syllabic accuracy. The scores were used to compare changes in performance on: (a) the recall and the repetition tasks, (b) the syllable recognition and the repetition tasks, and (c) between two repetitions. Phonological errors in the three tasks were highly related with intra-syllabic differentiation increasing with learning. [Work supported by NIH ZO1 DC 00005-09.]