50 paid volunteer college students were used in a GSR conditioning experiment with electric shock as the UCS. Words were used as stimuli with the CS word embedded among 4 control stimuli. Ss were divided into two groups, partially or continuously reinforced over 25 trials. Part of each group was informed as to the onset of extinction. For the Informed Ss, those continuously reinforced showed greater resistance to extinction than those partially reinforced (p = .03). For the Uninformed Ss the reverse was true (p = .02). The results show that informing Ss as to the onset of extinction makes response strength, as measured by resistance to extinction, a positive function of the number of reinforcements.
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