Effects of operant level, interview with experimenter, and awareness upon verbal conditioning of chronic schizophrenics.

The present research attempted to (a) cross-validate N. D. Vestre's (1961, 1965) findings that medium-operant-level pronouns can be conditioned by "good" in a chronic schizophrenic population, (b) test whether or not high-operant-level pronouns can be conditioned by "good" in a chronic schizophrenic population, and (c) compare the conditionability of high-operant-level with that of medium-operant-level pronouns. It was hypothesized that schizophrenics would be more conditionable following a brief, friendly, personal interview than in the absence of any preconditioning interview. It was expected that awareness of the response-reinforcement contingency would favor conditioning. Both the operant level and interview with experimenter variables were investigated to see whether or not either differentially affected (a) the number of aware Ss and (b) the performance of aware Ss. "Good" functioned as a reinforcer for about 1/4 of the Ss in this study. The most important factor contributing to performance was awareness of the response-reinforcement contingency. Also, reinforcement tended to be more effective when Ss had no (instead of a S-min) preexperimental interview with E. Medium-operant-level pronouns were conditionable, and results of conditionability comparisons between high- and medium-preference pronouns depended upon how performance was measured. The negligible conditionability of high-preference pronouns was 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)     

The effect of the schedule of reinforcement on operant conditioning of a verbal response in the autokinetic situation.

The autokinetic effect was employed to compare the effect of 2 different schedules of reinforcement on verbal behavior. One group of Ss was given 20 reinforcements of "Right" under a regular reinforcement schedule for emitting verbally the estimate designated as the response. A second group was given similar reinforcement under a variable interval schedule. The regular reinforcement group reached the criterion of extinction in 10 to 35 verbal emissions while no S in the variable interval group extinguished within 10 to 80 verbal emissions. 15 references. (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 and generalization of prodemocratic responses.

"This investigation found that verbal reinforcement was effective in shifting subjects to a more democratic position on a combination of the California and Christie F Scales. Further, the change generalized to the E Scale under conditions in which the experimenter was present, even though he was no longer reinforcing the subject. The experimenter evidently has social influence value." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4GD43S. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measurement of stimulus control during discriminative operant conditioning.

Procedures in common use in discriminative operant conditioning are examined. It is concluded that they do not provide useful measures of stimulus control during acquisition because they confound the discriminative stimuli with antecedent reinforcement-nonreinforcement. Procedures which avoid confounding and provide measures of stimulus control during an uninterrupted acquisition process are described. 1 such procedure is applied in an experiment on sequential effects in discrimination learning. Substantial effects of antecedent reinforcement-nonreinforcement on generalized response probability and on the difference in probability of response to the discriminative stimuli are shown. The existence of effects of this type indicates that confounding can introduce serious biases into the measures of stimulus control in discriminative operant conditioning. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The conditioning and generalization of changes in social perceptual dispositions.

This study examines hypotheses regarding the extent to which social perception may be effected by differential reinforcement and trait generalization. Ss are asked to judge photographs of faces as reflecting either one or the other of the following dimensions: safe-dangerous, good-bad, reliable-unreliable, and relaxed-tense. Selective response by E (saying "right" after the judgment "safe" was made," "wrong" after "dangerous") produced conditioning of the desired response and generalization to the other dimensions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Operant conditioning of verbal behavior of dysthymics and hysterics.

Previous findings (Eysenck, 1955; Franks, 1956) indicated that neurotics of the dysthymic type react differentially to conditioning procedures than hysterics, and that conditionability is related to extraversion-introversion. The present study investigates the validity of these findings using verbal conditioning techniques. The results did not confirm the hypothesis; the Ss were not distinguished by ease of conditionability, measures of extraversion and anxiety, but were by Edwards (1957) Social Desirability scale. From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4HI88G. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditioning and generalization of GSR as a function of awareness.

"This study was essentially a replication of… (an) experiment on the unconscious conditioning of autonomic responses. When… (the previous) methods of data analysis were used, their results in general were confirmed." Limitations and critique of the previous methodology is offered, and its effect on the results obtained is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adding a vocabulary component to incremental rehearsal to enhance retention and generalization.

The current study investigates the effect of adding a semantic component, in the form of vocabulary, to the incremental rehearsal (IR) procedure. Sixty-one second- and third-grade students in a suburban elementary school were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: IR or IR with vocabulary. Each participant was taught seven previously unknown words; participants were also taught the word's definition within the vocabulary condition. Retention and generalization were assessed one week later. Participants in the vocabulary condition retained and generalized significantly more words than participants in the IR only condition. Future studies should investigate effect of vocabulary integration in other reading interventions as well as the effect of vocabulary integration on reading fluency and passage comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Operant conditioning in a quasi-therapy setting.

In 6 recorded interviews with student volunteers, S was asked to talk about himself. E differentially reinforced ("mm-hm" with a nod) positive or negative self-references, or reinforced not at all. Conditioning occurred re reinforcement of negative statement, not under conditions of reinforcement of positive references or nonreinforcement. No relationship was found between initial level of anxiety or emotional adjustment and conditionability. General, but not statistically significant, trends towards reduction of anxiety or improvement in adjustment were noted. Most Ss were unaware of therapist's manipulation of his verbalizations. Conclusion: a patient's verbalizations can be influenced by therapist's communication. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of social and nonsocial censure on stimulus generalization in neurotics and schizophrenics.

36 schizophrenic and 36 neurotic depressive Ss were given a visual-spatial generalization task under either social or nonsocial (impersonal) censure conditions. The following hypotheses derived from previous investigations were tested: (1) schizophrenics would show higher gradients of generalization than neurotic depressives, and (2) generalization gradients would be higher under conditions of social as opposed to nonsocial censure, especially in schizophrenics. The data supported Hypothesis 1 but not Hypothesis 2. There was no evidence for differential responding between these 2 groups with respect to either stimulus generalization or response to censure. It was suggested that hypotheses concerning the schizophrenic's performance in these 2 situations have been biased and oversimplified by use of normal, rather than patient, control groups in previous investigations. (22 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experience-dependent effects of cocaine self-administration/conditioning on prefrontal and accumbens dopamine responses.

Experiments were performed to examine the effects of cocaine self-administration and conditioning experience on operant behavior, locomotor activity, and nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) dopamine (DA) responses. Sensory cues were paired with alternating cocaine and nonreinforcement during 12 (limited training) or 40 (long-term training) daily operant sessions. After limited training, NAcc DA responses to cocaine were significantly enhanced in the presence of cocaine-associated cues compared with nonreward cues and significantly depressed after cocaine-paired cues accompanied a nonreinforced lever response. PFC DA levels were generally nonresponsive to cues after the same training duration. However, after long-term training, cocaine-associated cues increased the magnitude of cocaine-stimulated PFC DA levels significantly over levels observed with nonreinforcement cues. Conversely, conditioned cues no longer influenced NAcc DA levels after long-term training. In addition, cocaine-stimulated locomotor activity was enhanced by cocaine-paired cues after long-term, but not after limited, training. Findings demonstrate that cue-induced cocaine expectation exerts a significant impact on dopaminergic and behavioral systems, progressing from mesolimbic to mesocortical regions and from latent to patent behaviors as cocaine and associative experiences escalate. (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)     

Covariation of alternative measures of responding in rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) eyeblink conditioning during acquisition training and tone generalization.

The likelihood, size, and speed of eyelid movements are thought to covary during the acquisition and expression of conditioning in rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) and are generally accepted as interchangeable measures of the associative strength activated by the conditioned stimulus (CS). To test this assumption, the authors examined the patterns of covariation in these eyelid movement measures in acquisition and stimulus generalization in the upper eyelid and nictitating membrane. Rather than the expected covariation among these measures, eyelid movement magnitudes during the CS were distributed in approximately a bimodal manner. That is, eyelid activity consisted largely of a mixture of very small ( 1 mm) movements. The results are discussed with respect to their implications for real-time models of eyelid conditioning. (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)     

Personality and verbal conditioning effects.

In line with the studies on the conditioning of verbal behavior and their reference to psychotherapy, the present study investigates the effects of Autonomy (as measured by the EPPS) upon verbal conditioning. The hypothesis was made that Autonomy would interfere with susceptibility to verbal conditioning. Ss were interviewed, being asked to talk about themselves; E reinforced (said "um-hmm" and nodded head) under 3 conditions, viz., when S made positive self-statements, negative self-statements, or reinforced randomly throughout the interview. The results indicate that by responding selectively, an interviewer can influence the verbalization of S; in this instance, reinforcement was effective in producing a significant effect on positive self-statements, but not negative ones. Meaning of results are discussed with relation to other research and an attempted formulation. From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3CJ41B. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The generalization of expectancies.

To test the proposition that generalization of expectancy changes occurs along a dimension of learned-goal similarity, a level-of-aspiration paradigm was utilized. The results were dealt with in terms of proportion of Ss who changed their expectancies on three generalization tasks (which varied in goal-relatedness to a control task by decreasing amounts) after experiencing success or failure on the control task. The data supported the hypothesis and indicated that the three tasks were significantly different from each other in relative position along the dimension of goal similarity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stimulus generalization as a function of clinical anxiety and direction of generalization.

"This experiment studied stimulus generalization in psychiatric patients as a function of direction of generalization and clinical anxiety. It was found that direction of generalization along the height continuum did not significantly affect the gradient of stimulus generalization. Level of clinical anxiety, as measured by the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, also did not significantly affect the gradient of stimulus generalization. The validity of the Taylor scale with psychiatric patients was discussed briefly." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensitization to cocaine in pigeons: Interaction with an operant contingency.

A 2-part study with pigeons investigated the role of an explicit operant contingency in determining how cocaine interacts with locomotor activity. In Part 1, pigeons pecked on a fixed-ratio-20 schedule of food presentation. In Part 2, different pigeons were studied without opportunity to peck for food. After determination of cocaine's initial effects, pigeons were exposed to daily administrations of a locomotion-increasing dose of cocaine. Locomotor sensitization was evident in the pigeons of Part 2, and tolerance developed to cocaine's effects on key pecking in the pigeons of Part 1. Locomotor sensitization was generally not evident in the pigeons of Part 1. These results suggest that explicitly conditioned operant behavior may compete with behavior sensitized by prolonged exposure to cocaine. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)