Anxiety and the conditioning of verbal behavior: a replication.

A study by Taffel which investigated the relationship between anxiety and operant verbal conditioning was replicated. 81 neurotic and psychotic hospitalized males were assigned to 1 of 3 reinforcement groups (light, verbal, and control) and were further divided into high, medium, and low anxiety categories on the basis of MAT scores. The sentence-completion paradigm was used to induce conditioning. Results indicated that both verbal and light reinforcement groups conditioned while only Ss with low anxiety demonstrated the conditioning effect. These findings were in contradiction to those cited by Taffel, and some of the possible causes for the differences were discussed.