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low status; and high activity/high status. Procedural checks suggested that experimental manipulations were successful, and significant relationships were found between interviewer and S reaction time latency and between S trust and revealingness. The predicted relationships between interviewer and S duration of utterance and the experimental conditions and revealingness were not found. There is need for further study of the effects of "noncontent" verbal behaviors in combination upon noncontent verbal behavior itself. Also, there is need for caution in generalizations from knowledge of this kind of reiationship to noncontent-content relationships or from verbally expressed attitudes to verbally expressed actions. REFERENCES 1. 2. 3. GOLDSTEIN, A. P., HELLER, I ? and SECHREST, L. B. Psychotherapy and the Psychology of Bi,huuior Change.

426 15. PHILLIPS, JEANNE S., MATARAZZO, J . D., MATARAZZO, RUTH G., and SASLOW, G. Observer reliability of interaction patterns during interviews. J . consult. Psychol., 1957,.21,269-275. 16. SASLOW, 0. and MATARAZZO, J. D. A technique for studying changes in interview behavior. 19. STARKWEATHER, J. A. Vocal behavior: the duration of speech units. Language and Speech, 20. STARKWEATHER, J. A. A speech rate meter for vocal behavior analysis. J . e z p . anal. Behau., 21. STARKWEATHER, J. A. Vocal communication of personality and human feelings. J . Communica-22. VERZEANO, M. Time-patterns of speech in normal subjects. J . Speech & Hearing Disorders, 23. VERZEANO, M. Time-patterns of speech in normal subjects, part 11.The rate of verbal learning has been used in recent studies(3. 6 ) to investigate the effects of personality variables on the learning process. While performance may change differentially among different diagnostic groups, inherent differences in patterns of task approach, such as response to instructions, speed of response to verbal stimuli, and duration of the response, must also be considered as possible sources of differences existing prior to learning. The importance of these response sets or styles has been discussed by Berg('), Jackson and Messick(4) and others attempting to differentiate between content and style in personality research. In verbal conditioning, response probabilities, i.e., what a person says (content), have been the primary dependent variables used to date. This paper reports findings, obtained in an ongoing experimental program, coinparing the stylistic characteristics of Ss selected for their high scores on the hysteria (HY) and psychasthenia (PT) scales of the MMPX.In clinical practice the hysteric has been described as egocentric, sensitive to his environment, quick in responding and suggestible to others. On the other hand, the psychasthenic has been characterized as indecisive, cautious and pedantic in his approach, deliberate in responding and relatively resistant to influence. This divergence in stylistic characteristics of these two clinical types has led to the following predictions concerning latency and duration of response in an experimental task and compliance with instructions. Hysterics would be expected to show shorter response latencies with briefer response durations and be more strongly influenced by more detailed instructions. The greater egocentricity of hysterics also leads to the prediction of their higher tendency to select verbal material which has self-reference. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERSONALITY VARIABLES AND VERBAL RESPONSE 427 METHOD Subjects. From a pool of 340 undergraduate female students, HY and PT groups were formed by selecting those Ss who were in the upper 25% on either of the two scales and in the lower 50% on the other scale. From this sample 68 volunteer Ss were used, 34 in each of the two groups.Apparatus and Procedure. The task consisted of a sentence construction procedure similar to that used in verbal conditioning studies. m 6, ...

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