Abstract
In the introductory course of "operant experiment" for the university students, infrahumans have mainly been used as experimental subjects. It might, however, be more effective to use human subjects, because the most students majoring in psychology, at least in the beginning, are more interested in human "mind" than infrahumans' behavior. In the present study, Taffel type verbal conditioning experiments were conducted to 77 sophomores with a single subject design. The results showed that the target response (the choice of "I" and "We") increased either by verbal or nonverbal reinforcer in 31% of all subjects. From the all of 87 students' responses on a post-experimental questionnaire, it was revealed that 53% of all students could understand the concept of positive reinforcement, and 47% of all students had interested in verbal conditioning. The reason for developing their interests in verbal conditioning was characterized either by the possibility of the conditioning without awareness or by its nature of everyday experience. Availability of verbal conditioning as a training method of operant conditioning and the problems of present experimental course were discussed.
