Truth and falsity of verbal statements as conditioned stimuli in classical and differential eyelid conditioning.

Abstract

Those studies that report decreases in percentage of digits recalled with increases in series length (Posner, 1963) were confirmed. When the mean number of digits recalled was calculated from the percentage recalled at the various series lengths, it was found that the mean number of digits recalled in this study was close to the time honored magic number seven, plus or minus two (Miller, 1956).REFERENCES CORBALLIS, M. C. Memory span as a function of variable presentation speeds and stimulus durations.

Conditioning a Discriminated Eyeblink Response to the “Truth Value” of Statements

“…The current experiments were designed to explore whether the abstract property of 'truth value' among presented statements can be reliably associated with an overt response in an eye-blink conditioning procedure (see Fleming, Grant, and North, 1968;Fleming et al, 1968a;1968b;Jaffe et al, 1966). The findings suggest that such a response could be conditioned, and can be conditioned irrespective of whether the truthvalue was 'true' or 'false'.…”

“…In the original reports (e.g., Fleming et al, 1968a;1968b), the duration of the stimulus was thought to be an important factor in establishing the conditioned responses (as reading the statements would require some finite time). For this reason, these studies employed a CS duration of 1900mswhich is outside the typical CS-US interval used in eye-blink conditioning experiments (see Kimble, 1961).…”

“…They noted that the 'wrong' solutions produced greater levels of conditioning than the 'right' answers. In contrast, Fleming et al (1968b) noted that when verbal statements were used, true answers produced stronger responses than false answers. This study also noted that the effect seen was stronger for partially reinforced compared to continuously reinforced stimuli.…”

“…However, overall, there have been relatively few studies that have explored the conditioning of non-verbal responses to the abstract properties of verbal stimuli (see Fleming, Grant, and North, 1968a;1968b;Jaffee, Millman, and Gorman, 1966;Tomash and Reed, 2013). Grant (1972) reviewed the earlier studies, and noted that, although several studies reported positive results, there were some mixed findings in the literature, making precise interpretation of the data difficult.…”

“…Grant (1972) reviewed the earlier studies, and noted that, although several studies reported positive results, there were some mixed findings in the literature, making precise interpretation of the data difficult. For example, several studies explored the conditioning of differential eye-blink responses to 'true' and 'false' verbal statements (Fleming et al, 1968b;Jaffee et al, 1966), and to the 'correctness' of presented arithmetic problems Conditioning truth value -5 (Fleming et al, 1968a). Jaffee et al (1966;see also Fleming et al, 1968b) conditioned an eye-blink response to instances of verbal deception, by pairing instances of deception with a corneal air-puff.…”