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Paired-Associate Learning

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology

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Synonyms

Associative memory; Episodic memory; Relational learning

Definition

Paired-associate learning (PAL) is an episodic memory paradigm in which pairs of items (e.g., “absence-hollow”) are presented during one or more learning trials. At test, the first item of the pair is presented as a cue in order to elicit a response of the second item. Memory for the test items by themselves is insufficient to support accurate PAL memory performance; rather, accurate PAL is based on whether the paired items have been associated, or bound together, in memory. PAL was first described by Mary Whiton Calkins in 1894, a time during which all learning was viewed as associations between stimuli and responses, and reflects classic “stimulus-response” assumptions that dominated experimental psychology from the early-to mid-to late twentieth century. Today, there is much interest in PAL, as psychologists view this type of memory paradigm to be representative of the kind of learning undertaken in...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Queens College of the City University of New York, Flushing, NY, USA

    Kerri A. Scorpio, Rubyat Islam & Sun Mi Kim

  2. Department of Neurology, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, NY, USA

    Rebecca Bind

  3. Department of Psychology, Queens College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 65-30 Kissena Blvd, Flushing, NY, 11367, USA

    Joan C. Borod

  4. Department of Neurology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 5 East 98th Street, New York, 10029, NY, USA

    Joan C. Borod & Heidi A. Bender

Authors
  1. Kerri A. Scorpio
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  2. Rubyat Islam
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  3. Sun Mi Kim
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  4. Rebecca Bind
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  5. Joan C. Borod
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  6. Heidi A. Bender
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kerri A. Scorpio .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Richmond, Virgin Islands, USA

    Jeffrey Kreutzer

  2. Kessler Foundation , West Orange, New Jersey, USA

    John DeLuca

  3. Suite 200 , Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, USA

    Bruce Caplan

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Scorpio, K.A., Islam, R., Kim, S.M., Bind, R., Borod, J.C., Bender, H.A. (2017). Paired-Associate Learning. In: Kreutzer, J., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_1137-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_1137-2

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