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EXPERIMENT NO: 5

EMOTIONAL CONDITIONING

Purpose:

An experiment was conducted to demonstrate association of non sense syllables with

negative and positive previously conditions words.

Introduction:

Classical Conditioning:

A stimulus that does not produce a response is paired with a stimulus that does elicit a

response. After many such pairings, the stimulus that previously had no effect begins to produce

a response.

Secondary Classical Conditioning:

The procedure whereby a neutral stimulus becomes a conditional stimulus CS by being

paired with a well-established conditional stimulus CS is called secondary classical conditioning.

Appetitive Conditioning:

If the unconditional stimulus used is positive (something the organism would ordinarily

seek out, such as food, water or sexual stimulation) the procedure is called appetitive

conditioning.
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Defense Conditioning:

If the unconditional stimulus is aversive (something the organism would ordinarily try to

avoid, such as electric shock, extreme heat or a pin prick) the procedure is called defense

conditioning.

Experiment on appetitive and defense conditioning:

Carolyn and Arthur Staats performed a series of experiments on secondary classical

conditioning which included both appetitive and defense procedure. Their basic strategy was to

pair a relatively neutral stimulus with one that was presumably a CS for some emotional

response. The purpose was to see whether these procedures would result in the neutral stimuli

become conditional stimuli.

In one experiment the researchers had college students look at nonsense syllables such as

YOF, LAJ, and QUG as they were flashed on the screen. At the same time the students repeated

words spoken by the experimenters. For some students the YOF always paired with a positive

word such as beauty, gift and win, while the syllable XEH was always paired with a negative

word such as thief, sad and enemy. For other students the procedure was reversed: XEH was

paired with positive words, YOF with negative words. After this the students rated the nonsense

syllables on a seven-point scale ranging from unpleasant to pleasant. The results showed that the

non sense syllables had acquired the emotional meanings of the words with which they have

been paired. When a nonsense syllable was regularly associated with positive words, it became

pleasant; when it was paired with negative words, it became unpleasant.

We are doing this experiment again and we will see we are getting the same results or

not.
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Hypothesis:

H1: When a nonsense syllable is regularly associated with positive words, it becomes

pleasant; when it is paired with negative words, it become unpleasant.

Method:

Apparatus: list of nonsense syllables, Multimedia, Paper, Pencil

Subject: There are ten subjects. Their age ranges from 20 to 24. All subjects are students of BS

(Hons.).

Procedure: The subjects were asked to sit on the chairs one by one in front of multimedia. They

were given instructions about the procedure of the experiment. They seated comfortably but were

a little bit curious about the experiment. There were 10 nonsense syllables such as YLZ, KPU

and XEH, which were appeared on the screen one by one and were shown to the subjects. At the

same time the students repeated words spoken by the experimenter. Five trials were taken for

each word. The word QMG always paired with a positive word such as beauty, gift and love,

while the syllable BMK was always paired with a negative word such as thief, sad and enemy.

While other nonsense syllables were paired with the neutral words such as table, chair, road, car

etc. After this the subjects were given a scale that had ratings from 1 to 7, where 1 being

unpleasant and 7 being pleasant. On the scale words were written vertically and rating 1 to 7 was

written horizontally. Students rated the nonsense syllables on a seven-point scale ranging from

unpleasant to pleasant.

Results:
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The results showed that QMG became good and the mean score is 6.3 and BMK became

bad and mean score is 2.7. Neutral stimulus becomes conditioned stimulus. Table 1 shows rating

of the non sense syllables by 10 subjects. And table 2 shows the mean score for words that

become pleasant and unpleasant after conditioning.

Table 1: Rating of Non sense syllables

Subject YLZ KPU XEH *QMG RNM *BMK JMT ZXT YRQ YMK
1 4 5 6 7 3 4 2 3 4 4
2 4 3 5 6 5 3 1 4 5 5
3 5 2 6 7 6 2 4 4 3 3
4 3 4 4 6 4 4 4 5 4 4
5 4 5 3 6 4 3 3 4 4 4
6 6 4 3 7 4 3 3 3 5 5
7 5 3 3 6 3 2 2 4 3 4
8 4 2 4 7 3 2 2 5 3 3
9 4 5 5 7 4 3 3 5 4 2
10 4 4 4 5 3 1 4 3 4 4
*QMG (positive) Mean=6.3 *BMK (negative) Mean=2.7
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Table 2: Mean scores of Positive and Negative words

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4

Mean Mean Mean Mean
Positive words 6.3 5.1 5.7 4.8
Negative words 2.7 2.3 2.1 3.3

Discussion:

The practical showed that nonsense syllables which had no meaning previously acquired

the positive and negative emotional meaning after conditioning with positive and negative

words. So emotional conditioning has occurred.