Mediated generalization and the interpretation of verbal behavior: III. Experimental study of antonym gradients.

Abstract

In the previous discussion of mediated and non-mediated generalization (i), it was suggested that the former type of generalization might occur along a number of different gradients in addition to those involving synonyms. One of the possible other gradients suggested was that involving antonyms. The present paper reports an experiment designed to determine experimentally whether generalization does occur to antonyms.In the previous paper, we described the mechanism which, it is assumed, mediates generalization in the case of synonymous words (i, Fig. i; see also 3, pp. 27-28). In the case of antonyms it is possible that the mediating mechanism is somewhat more complex than is the case with synonyms. To explore this theoretical possibility would require a great deal of discussion, and we merely mention the point here, reserving until a later time the examination of this question.A previous study by Riess (4) showed that generalization to antonyms does occur. He used the galvanic skin reaction to a bell as the response to be conditioned. The present experiment employed a larger number of antonyms than Riess used, and the method was essentially the same as that used in a previous investigation of homophone and synonym generalization (2). METHOD 1. Materials.-A list of 10 unrelated familiar words (presentation or P-list) was assembled such that from each word an antonym could be derived. Other complicating semantic or homophonic relationships were minimized. According to our hypothesis, the repetition (reinforcement) of these antonyms should increase the reaction potentials of the words in the original (P) list more than would the repetition of an unrelated list (control), and hence recall of the P-list should reflect this difference. Two reinforcement lists were accordingly constructed: (1) the A-R list was composed of xo words each one of which was an antonym of one word in the P-list; (2) the C-Ri list was composed of 10 words which were not related to any words in the P-list in any evident or formal way, directly or indirectly. These two lists, along with the

Mediated generalization and the interpretation of verbal behavior: V. 'Free association' as related to differences in professional training.

“…In previous papers of this series, direct and indirect, or mediated, types of generalization were theoretically discussed (3) and experimentally demonstrated along various gradients (8,4). The development of mediated generalization in an everyday-life situation was also experimentally investigated (9).…”

“…This result was especially true in the case of 'predicative associations' (e.g., glass-brittle, father-good), which were given by 60 percent of the children under 12 years of age from the 'proletariat' and by only 30 percent of the children of the same age from the 'better circles.' 4 Rosanoff, Martin, and Rosanoff (16) have attempted to develop a free association technique "whereby a subject's mental capacity might be estimated from a measure of what he has acquired in the course of his education, and from a comparison of his acquisition with the average of a group of subjects of the same amount of education" (p. 2). The stimulus words consisted of 100 orally-presented technical terms, selected from different fields of academic learning (e.g., Waterloo, isomerism, burette, coagulation, titration, syntax, etc.).…”

Mediated generalization and the interpretation of verbal behavior. IV. Experimental study of the development of inter-linguistic synonym gradients.

“…As indicated in Table I, Buffer List A consisted of eight numbers (spelled out) and Buffer List B was composed of eight Christian names. These lists were similar to those employed in previous studies of this series (2,3), the selection of numbers and names being dictated by the desire to minimize the possibility of generalization effects from these sources.…”

“…Subsequent papers reported evidence of generalization (a) along more than one homophone gradient from a given stimulus word (3), (b) along a synonym gradient from the stimulus word (3), (c) along a synonym gradient two degrees of transformation removed from the original stimulus word (3), and (d) along an antonym gradient from the stimulus word (2). The positive results indicating generalization along all of these dimensions may be interpreted as, to this extent, confirming the previous theoretical analysis (1).…”

“…METHOD I. Materials.-Spanish words were selected for use in the present study because of the possibility of getting Spanish words, included in the vocabularies of the beginning lessons, which did not bear a resemblance to English words or to words in other languages with which a subject might be familiar. 2 The 10 words selected were taken from the vocabularies presented in the first 10 lessons of the textbook * used in the elementary Spanish classes, "I* hese words are presented in Table I, as is the Test List of 10 English words, each being the prescribed equivalent of one of the Spanish words. In each case, care was taken to select short Spanish words which least resembled, homographically or semantically, any English word, and every effort was made to minimize other complicating semantic relationships.…”