Symbolic Activity in 'Learning without Awareness'

Task structure and the experimental modification of verbal behavior.

“…A review of such studies reveals that increased awareness occurs as a function of the greater availability of information as tasks become more structured and less ambiguous to the subject. Information about the task has proved to facilitate awareness in a number of studies (Kanfer & Marston, 1961;Kanfer & McBrearty, 1961;Krasner & Ullmann, 1963;Tatz, 1960). Comparison of the proportion of aware subjects across a variety of conditioning tasks would be of additional value in this respect.…”

Studies of the conditioning of verbal behavior.

“…Tatz (97) instructed his 5s to say an "unsystematically varied three digit number" each time a light goes on.…”

“…Thirty-one studies (4,7,15,16,17,21,27,39,40,41,44,46,51,54,56,61,62,64,66,68,85,86,88,89,91,95,96,97,101,105,107) have certain features in common that distinguish them as a body of research which belongs together. They arc all studies of operant conditioning of verbal behavior.…”

Anxiety and verbal conditioning.

“…No information was provided by Sarason on whether subjects who were aware of the reinforcement had hypotheses involving response-reinforcement contingencies which were correlated with the experimenter's principle of reinforcement. Tatz (1960) and Dulany (1961) have demonstrated that subjects with correlated hypotheses showed significant performance gains on verbal conditioning tasks, whereas unaware subjects did not.…”