Acquisition and maintenance of matching without a required observing response.

The team ran matching-to-sample lessons with adult humans.

Half the trials forced the learner to press the sample once before the choices appeared.

The other half let the choices pop up with no extra step.

They tracked how fast each group reached 90 % correct and how long the skill lasted.

The forced-observing group hit mastery in about half the trials.

Their accuracy stayed high for the rest of the session.

When the rule was dropped, accuracy fell and people started pressing the sample on their own.

The extra click acted like glue for attention.

Eisenmajer et al. (1998) later showed that making the sample harder to see also slows learning, but the fix is different—clearer stimuli, not more clicks.

Galizio et al. (2018) got the same boost in rats: four good examples plus a required nose-poke made identity matching stick with new smells.

Parsons et al. (1981) swapped the click for a functional step—autistic kids opened a lid to reach candy—and saw the same jump in speed.

All four studies line up: make the learner do something meaningful right before the reinforcer and learning accelerates.

Next time you run matching programs, add one cheap step: have the learner touch, point, or say the sample before the comparison cards appear.

No extra tokens, no new materials—just one second of required observing.

You should see faster mastery and fewer errors, especially when you later probe with novel sets.