Controlling Classical Conditioning with Sentence Structure

Abstract

64 Ss were randomly assigned to one of two learning strategies for associating visually presented male names with orally presented evaluative words. The contiguity treatment produced attitude changes in the direction of the associated evaluative words. The negative statement treatment stopped the conditioning effect and in two cases significantly reversed the direction of attitude change. It was concluded that sentence structure can dramatically alter the role that contiguity plays in verbal attitudinal learning.