The effects of verbal and nonverbal responses in mediating an instrumental act.

Abstract

Stimulus generalization to a gray stimulus was tested after training separate responses to white and black stimuli and essentially no generalization was found. A second training series provided the subjects with verbal or motor mediational responses which were then incorporated with the original responses to black and white. Generalization was again tested and a significant difference was found between test and retest performance for both groups. The verbal responses, however, provided the greatest amount of mediated generalization. A control group also learned to make the motor mediational response but this response was not incorporated with the original task. Although the test-retest difference for this group was significant this group''s performance was markedly inferior to that of the other two groups. Forty-eight children served as subjects.