Abstract
Active or passive sentences were learned in response to nouns. In one set of either construction the first noun was elicited as primary word associate to a stimulus noun, and in re-paired sets the second noun was so elicited. Comparison groups learned the same sentences in response to unrelated stimulus nouns. Results indicated that sentences beginning with high response strength (RS) nouns are easier to learn than sentences ending with high RS nouns. By inference, word order in natural speech is a function of RS, where verbal operants at high RS tend to be emitted early. Error analysis provided weak evidence for change in word order attributable to RS. The active construction appeared easier to learn than the passive construction, and syntactic errors tended to be in the direction of the simpler construction.
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