Effects of Prior Verbal or Nonverbal Experience on Acquisition and Awareness in Verbal Operant Conditioning

Abstract

Using a Taffel-type conditioning situation, female undergraduate Ss were reinforced with “good” for using activity verbs to compose sentences. One group received only typical (neutral) verbal-conditioning instructions; another group was given a problem-solving set following operant trials; a third group served as nonreinforced controls. Preconditioning verbal or nonverbal experience was introduced via a free-responding word-saying task, a written sentence-completion task, or an inkblot-perception task. Awareness was assessed via a postconditioning interview. Superior acquisition was found in groups exposed to previous verbal (oral or written) experience, while the inkblot-perception group did not differ from nonreinforced control Ss. Contrary to prediction, learning set failed to produce superior conditioning. Prior verbal experience led to an increased number of aware Ss, while the majority of Ss exposed to nonverbal prior experience failed to report awareness. It was suggested that Es attempt to control for prior experience of Ss in verbal operant conditioning research.