The discrimination of the onset of joint control is an important interpretive tool in explaining matching behavior and other complex phenomena, but the difficulty of getting experimental control of all relevant variables stands in the way of a definitive experiment. The studies in the present issue of "The Analysis of Verbal Behavior" illustrate…

Eight- and 9-year-olds (N=56) were studied to determine the degree to which counterconditioning could alter the positive or negative value acquired by a neutral stimulus in a conditioning situation. Dependent measures used to assess the effects of conditioning were found to have no independent effect on subsequent evaluations of the once-neutral…

Explores role of ambiguity in producing verbal conditioning by using two E types and two S types. Six college students were assigned to "crafty Es. Results revealed that certain types of ambiguity increase verbal compliance. (Author)

Implications of the behaviorist and cognitive theories in language instruction are discussed in this article. Some contributions of Skinner, Politzer, Valette, Morton, Lane, and Mueller and Niedzielski clarify the behaviorists' view of language as a myriad of conditioned responses. In turn, the cognitive viewpoint, seen as the acquisiton and…

THIS TECHNICAL REPORT PRESENTS, IN SUBSTANCE, THE CONTENTS OF THE FIRST CHAPTER OF A BOOK IN PREPARATION DEALING WITH STANFORD UNIVERSITY EXPERIMENTS ON PARTICULAR ASPECTS OF THE LEARNING OF RUSSIAN BY AMERICANS WITH NO PREVIOUS EXPOSURE TO SLAVIC LANGUAGES. THE GENERAL AIM OF THE COMPLETED VOLUME WILL BE TO APPLY CERTAIN PRINCIPLES AND RESULTS OF…

An experiement was conducted to test the hypothesis that interest inventory items would function as reinforcing stimuli in a visual discrimination task. When previously rated liked and disliked items from the Strong Vocational Interest Blank were differentially presented following one of two responses, subjects learned to respond to the stimulus…