Operant Conditioning of Spoken Phonemes /S/ and /Z/ and Awareness

Abstract

Four groups of 15 Ss each selected 1 of 2 nouns and gave its plural when it was presented on a 3- × 5-in. index card. Each S was then given a post-conditioning interview. 15 Ss were reinforced by the word “good” for choosing nouns whose plurals were formed by adding the voiced alveolar fricative /z/. 15 were reinforced for choosing plurals formed by adding the unvoiced alveolar fricative /s/. The other two groups were used as /s/ and /z/ controls. Both reinforced groups showed significant conditioning effects when compared with their controls with no significant interaction between reinforcement and phoneme response class. Ss showed a preference for /z/ as compared to /s/ plurals at a statistically significant level. A comparison of conditioning scores for those who were aware of the reinforcement “good” and also those who were not aware of any reinforcement was made with those who were aware of a correlated or correct reinforcement response contingency. Greater awareness produced significantly greater conditioning, indicating that conditioning effects are related to a post-conditioning interview even in a reinforcement response contingency which is not easily discriminable.