The Effect of Experimental Anxiety upon Verbal Behavior

摘要

This paper reports an exploratory study on the influence of experimental anxiety upon word association. After a basal series of tone-alone trials, subjects were exposed to a tone-shock sequence on an irregular reinforcement schedule. The tone was of 1-second, and the shock of 6-second, duration, with a trace interval of 6-second, duration, with a trace interval of 6 seconds separating the two stimuli on reinforce trials. An extinction phase of tone-alone trial followed the conditioning phase. On each trial throughout the experiment, a stimulus word from the Kent-Rosanoff list was presented 3 seconds after the end of the tone. The subject was required to respond verbally in accordance with the standard Kent-Rosanoff instructions, and his response words, together with their reaction times, were recorded.