Attention in Awareness and Performance in Verbal Conditioning

Abstract

The effects of high, medium, or low attention in awareness and performance in verbal conditioning were investigated using specific instructions to direct subjects' attention toward or away from the role of the reinforcing stimulus. The experimenter asked 36 subjects to state freely any words that might come to mind and reinforced only words denoting human nouns by saying “hmm-mmm.” Subjects in the high-attention group were instructed to act so as to make the experimenter say “hmm-mmm” as often as possible. Those with medium attention received no specific instructions; while those given low attention were told that the “hmm-mmm” was a distracting agent. A control group was randomly reinforced. It was hypothesized that high, medium or low attention would differentially affect the performance, e.g., number of human nouns, and the state of awareness of the subjects, e.g., the verbalization of the role of the reinforcer. The performance of the highly attentive group differed significantly from all others; however, those giving low and medium attention did not differ from the control. The results were interpreted as supporting a cognitive view of learning.