Verbalizing and writing as auxiliary responses during discrimination learning

Abstract

Ss verbalized or wrote predetermined stimulus names during visual discrimination learning. Those verbalizing or writing only the names of correct stimuli made significantly fewer errors in learning the discriminations than did those required to verbalize or write a mixed pattern of correct and incorrect names. Although Ss writing a mixed pattern tended to make slightly fewer errors than those verbalizing the same pattern, a difference which appears to be statistically significant given large samples, the overall conclusion was that as auxiliary responses, verbalizing and writing have essentially equivalent effects.