Discriminative and Reinforcing Functions of Four Verbal Stimuli

Abstract

Only those Ss who were both aware of the response-reinforcement contingency and for whom the appropriate contingent stimuli were, in fact, reinforcing conditioned. The Right-blank group was significantly slower in learning than the Correct-blank, Wrong-blank, and Incorrect-blank groups, indicating the ambiguity of “Right” as a discriminative stimulus. A comparable number of Ss in each group reported the contingent stimuli to be reinforcing, thus showing the necessity of awareness to conditioning.