Abstract
The present study examined the influence of neutral stimuli, highly negative affective stimuli, and highly positive affective stimuli on the learning of paired-associates in a male juvenile delinquent population. Subjects were 90 incarcerated first offenders in a state administered coeducational facility. Six paired-associate treatments were administered with each paired-associate composed of a low meaningful Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) trigram and either a neutral word, highly positive affective word, or highly negative affective word. The two independent variables were affect-of-word and position-of-word. The dependent variable was learning efficiency over five trials. It was found that for this sample, affect-of-word, whether highly positive, highly negative, or neutral, had little influence on learning efficiency. Apparently the juvenile delinquent does not internalize affect from verbal stimuli while learning paired-associates. The position-of-word variable was highly significant, indicating trigrams to be more difficult to learn than meaningful words when in the response position.
Mellen, Ronald Roy (1976). The impact of highly positive and highly negative affective stimuli on the learning of paired-associates within a male juvenile delinquent population. Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -613885.