The pre-exposure technique: Enhancing the effects of errorless learning in the acquisition of face–name associations

In an earlier paper (Downes et al., 1997), we demonstrated how the beneficial effects of imagery in a face-name association learning task could be enhanced further by the simple expedient of pre-exposing faces for a brief period prior to the introduction of the names to be associated. The present study examines whether the technique of errorless learning, recently applied in neuropsychological rehabilitation, might also benefit from pre-exposure. The rationale for hypothesising such an interaction follows from the speculation raised in our earlier work that the two techniques may be operating at different stages of learning—pre-exposure at registration/consolidation stages and errorless learning at retrieval. Accordingly, a group of brain-injured memory-impaired subjects was given four sets of face-name associations to learn under different experimental conditions. Two of these conditions compared errorless and errorful conditions, and two combined errorless learning with different versions of the pre-exposure technique. The results confirm that, in terms of the number of names learned on the first trial and the number of trials to criterion, errorless learning was significantly superior to errorful learning. Furthermore, both preexposure conditions in combination with errorless learning resulted in a significant enhancement of learning compared to errorless learning alone. Thus, as with imagery, although significant gains in performance are evident when errorless learning is used, further enhancement can be achieved by combining it with preexposure.