Conditioning to complex stimuli.

A research program is described dealing with behavior in a classical GSR conditioning situation. The empirical program is related "to the broader perspective of psychology in general." The research "affords a slim—but I hope stable—bridge between S-R learning theory and whatever is meant by perceptual theory." A rationale of assumptions is developed and on the basis of analysis predictions are formulated. "The present results are eminently consonant with an S-S interpretation of behavior… though I have attempted to make it consonant with S-R contiguity theory by employing the notion of internalized stimuli generated by responses to the conditioned stimulus." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The dominance-contiguity theory of the acquisition of classical conditioning.

The purpose of this article is to present a formulation of the "dominance-contiguity" theory of the acquisition of classical conditioning in the light of a new treatment of old research and the large amount of new research relevant to the theory. One of the conclusions drawn was "that contiguity is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for classical CR acquisition and that drive reduction is neither necessary nor sufficient for it." 668 item bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some relationships between GSR conditioning and judgments of anxiety.

"The aim of the present study was to investigate… the relationship between GSR conditioning and various clinical judgments of anxiety in a sample of psychiatric patients conditioned under presumably optimal procedures… . anxiety groups ranked on the basis of admission psychological data… were found to be significantly different in conditionability." This was not so with Ss ranked via the Taylor MA scale, and "anxiety groups revealed no significant differences in extinction." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The misbehavior of organisms.

"In our attempt to extend a behavioristically oriented approach to the engineering control of animal behavior by operant conditioning techniques, we have fought a running battle with the seditious notion of instinct." Several instances of persistent nonreinforced behavior which interfere with learning "represent a clear and utter failure of conditioning theory." Persistent "behaviors to which… animals drift are clear-cut examples of instinctive behaviors… . It seems obvious that these animals are trapped by strong instinctive behaviors, and clearly we have here a demonstration of the prepotency of such behavior patterns over those which have been conditioned." In recent years "ethological facts and attitudes… have done more to advance our practical control of animal behavior than recent reports from American 'learning labs." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hypotheses and habits in verbal "operant conditioning.'

The traditional explanation of experiments related to conditioning of verbal behavior in terms of operant conditioning, i.e., learning without awareness, was questioned. It was hypothesized that such conditioning to cues given by E might be based on S's awareness of the cue and assumed meaning of such a stimulus. 2 experiments were performed, 1 where plural nouns were reinforced, and a 2nd to test the generalization of this acquired pattern on a word association test. The usual findings re: conditioning of plural nouns was replicated and there seemed to be a carry-over of the set to the word association test. However, some Ss seemed to be aware of the meaning of such a reinforcer as "um-hm." Moreover, response set was also seen to affect conditionability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal conditioning as a function of experimenter characteristics.

An investigation was conducted to test the hypothesis that differences in the characteristics of experimenters can lead to differential learning effects when the experimental session involves verbal conditioning without awareness. "Two experimenters of different sex and markedly different height, weight, age, appearance, and personality ran separate groups of Ss." Results indicated that "the response 'Good' was reinforcing for the class of behavior consisting of the use of hostile words in sentences. In addition, it was found that the rates of learning for the Ss of the two experimenters differed significantly, with a steeper slope for the female experimenter's group." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Under what conditions can human affective conditioning occur without contingency awareness? Test of the evaluative conditioning paradigm.

The role of conscious cognitive processes in human affective conditioning remains controversial, with several theories arguing that such conditioning can occur without awareness of the conditioned stimulus (CS)-unconditioned stimulus (UCS) contingency. One specific type of affective conditioning in which unaware conditioning is said to occur is "evaluative conditioning." The present experiment tested the role of contingency awareness by embedding an evaluative conditioning paradigm in a distracting masking task while obtaining, in addition to subjective ratings of affect, both psychophysiological (skin conductance and startle eyeblink) and indirect behavioral (affective priming) measures of conditioning, along with a trial-by-trial measure of awareness from 55 college student participants. Aware participants showed conditioning with all of the measures; unaware participants failed to show conditioning with all measures. The behavioral, neurophysiological, and therapeutic implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The operant conditioning of human motor behavior.

"This paper reports procedures for the direct application of the variables defining the paradigm for operant conditioning to human behavior, and shows that human beings act very much indeed like experimental animals when they are subjected to the same experimental treatments. It suggests that direct application of conditioning principles to some categories of human behavior may be justified. The procedures are simple, and they may be followed by anyone, with a minimum of equipment." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on the use of the terms conditioning and reinforcement.

The "… term conditioning was originally used… to denote the behavioral fact that a stimulus inadequate for some response could become adequate by virtue of being combined one or more times with a stimulus adequate for the response… . The situation at present is as follows. Conditioning is being used as an all-covering account of both Pavlovian and Skinnerian learning which by all tokens are quite distinct—and even divergent—from each other methodologically, operationally, behaviorally, and functionally. And reinforcement, in its turn, wields four different meanings." The author claims that "… not only is such a mixing of terms in itself unjustified but in twenty years has hardly caught on beyond the reign of its immediate proponents." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Manifest" anxiety, neurotic anxiety, and the rate of conditioning.

"The validity of the Taylor Scale of Manifest Anxiety was examined with a view to reconciling the contradictory results of the studies of the relation between anxiety and the rate of conditioning… . The results indicated that different scores on the scale do not represent different degrees of manifest anxiety, though the scores within a limited range (19 to 33) are more likely to be associated with a clinical diagnosis of "anxious" than are scores above and below this range." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reinforcement of affect responses of schizophrenics during the clinical interview.

Using 20 hospitalized schizophrenics in an experimental group and 16 in a control group it was shown that "conditioning of the response of self-referred affect statements was found to be possible with schizophrenics during an otherwise usual clinical interview. The relationship between number of reinforcements and number of responses in extinction was described by means of a straight line, i.e., the greater the number of reinforcements, the greater the number of extinction responses." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lope de Vega on early conditioning.

A play, El Capellán de la Virgen (The Chaplain of the Virgin), probably written in 1615 which antedates scientific work on conditioning by about three centuries describes some conditioning phenomena. A character beset by cats who would steal his food put them in a sack. "First I would cough and then immediately whale the daylight out of the cats. They whined and shrieked… . I would pause for a while and repeat the operation—first a cough and then a thrashing." Thereafter, if an animal approached my food, "… all I had to do was to cough, and how that cat did scatp" (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

GSR conditioning, anxiety, and extraversion.

"Hypotheses by Eysenck and Spence relating GSR conditioning to extraversion and anxiety, respectively, were examined… [Ss] scoring on the extremes of anxiety and extraversion were selected… . Using a conditioned response amplitude measure,… a significant positive relationship was found between anxiety and conditioning. No significant relationship was found between extraversion and conditioning… . The results give clear support to Spence's theory while failing to support that of Eysenck." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4CG27B. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A study of human behavior: The clinical psychologist.

The psychologist "has derived some benefit by the mixture of being a doctor but not being identified with the mentally ill person." By reviewing personal and cultural forces the attempt was made to establish the variety of emphases current in clinical psychology. "Nearly every adjustment pattern observed among clinicians has occurred as a result of training and experience in some university, school or clinic. As yet, no completely satisfying or dominant component of needs has been discovered for the training and role of the clinical psychologist… . But it is a backward step to discard special curricular requirements for clinical psychologists." A prime requirement for a profession is "a disciplined and recognizable training program." The public that supports us will demand "a real and inexorable service contribution that we have implicitly promised… . We evolved on the impetus of service need." A number of current conflicts of the clinical psychologist are indicated. "The only way professional psychologists can hold to a responsible place is by partial separation from the academic, basic science psychologists." Leaders in clinical psychology should "be more than 80% in real clinical work with ill patients." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The things people say to themselves.

"The one thing psychologists can count on is that their subjects or clients will talk, if only to themselves. And, not infrequently, whether relevant or irrelevant, the things people say to themselves determine the rest of the things they do." Major sections are: Thorndike on learning without awareness, Evidence and interpretations of the role of awareness, Verbal conditioning, An experiment, and Cognitive-noncognitive issue revaluated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Standard delay eyeblink classical conditioning is independent of awareness.

P. F. Lovibond and D. R. Shanks (see record 2002-00340-001) suggested that all forms of classical conditioning depend on awareness of the stimulus contingencies. This article considers the available data for eyeblink classical conditioning, including data from 2 studies (R. E. Clark, J. R. Manns, & L. R. Squire, 2001; J. R. Manns, R. E. Clark, & L. R. Squire, 2001) that were completed too recently to have been considered in their review. In addition, in response to questions raised by P. F. Lovibond and D. R. Shanks, 2 new analyses of data are presented from studies published previously. The available data from humans and experimental animals provide strong evidence that delay eyeblink classical conditioning (but not trace eyeblink classical conditioning) can be acquired and retained independently of the forebrain and independently of awareness. This conclusion applies to standard conditioning paradigms; for example, to single-cue delay conditioning when a tone is used as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and to differential delay conditioning when the positive and negative conditioned stimuli (CS+ and CS-) are a tone and white noise. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety and the conditioning of verbal behavior.

Ninety hospitalized psychiatric patients were administered the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale. The S's were then required to make up sentences in response to a stimulus card on which were printed a verb and one of six pronouns. E reinforced any sentence starting with I or WE by saying "good" or flashing a light. Scores on the Taylor scale showed a relationship to the amount of conditioning produced by "good." Light, as applied in this study, does not function as a reinforcer in a verbal situation. Implications for further research are described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the persistence of avoidance behavior.

"The persistence of avoidance behavior was investigated using a procedure in which every lever-pressing response served to delay the occurrence of a shock. All other behavior was capable of producing the shock. In agreement with the report of Solomon, Kamin, and Wynne, it was found that the avoidance behavior was extremely persistent even when no shocks occurred. Eventually, however, the response always weakened to the point where additional shocks were required to maintain its strength. Persistence of the avoidance response, at least in the early stages of extinction, was found to be directly related to its strength during conditioning." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A learning theory approach to research in schizophrenia.

"An attempt has been made to view schizophrenia as a problem in learning theory. The research in conditioning, learning, and generalization in schizophrenia has been reviewed in these terms. It was found that this research supported such an interpretation. An explication of the causes of an acute schizophrenic break and the transition to chronicity was attempted." 79 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)