Influence of awareness of reinforcement on verbal conditioning.

Abstract

The purpose of the experiment was to study the influence of a stimulus light blink following plural verbal responses upon the rate of plural responses. It was hypothesized that the conditioning of plurals would take place even for Ss who were unable to verbally state the purpose of the expt. or of the conditioning light. The results indicated the effectiveness of the light flash as a reinforcing stimulus and also demonstrated that learning without awareness had taken place. Assigning a task of making the light blink to an additional group had little or no effect on behavior.