The Influence of Awareness and Schedule of Reinforcement on Verbal Conditioning

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to increase evidence which supports the concept that awareness is a necessary variable in verbal conditioning with human subjects. One hundred and twenty subjects were administered the Taffel Verbal Conditioning Task after being randomly assigned to either a continuous reinforcement schedule, a 75%, 50%, or 25% partial reinforcement schedule. Awareness of reinforcement contingency was assessed by a post-test questionnaire. An analysis of variance performed on the frequency with which aware subjects emitted the reinforced pronouns revealed a significance Group x Trials effect for both acquisition (p<.001) and extinction (p<.05). Nonaware subjects did not exhibit verbal conditioning, i.e., they did not reveal an increase in the reinforced response on any of the four reinforcement schdules. The influence of subject resistance behavior on verbal conditioning was also considered. The present study supports the conclusion that awareness of the reinforcement contingency is a necessary variable in verbal conditioning. The reactions of aware subjects to various schedules of reinforcement also adds to literature in support of the cognitive aspects regarding the conditioning human behavior.