Verbal responses to past events: Intraverbal relations, or tacts to private events?

Abstract

Seventy-five undergraduate students worked through a computer program which taught them to correctly identify four solid geometry figures. The video screen background color was incidently different for each figure. Later, when given a colorless background, students were asked to say what color accompanied the instructional frames for each superimposed figure. Taken as a whole, the 75 students correctly recalled the previously paired colors 53% of the time (p<.0001) when compared to a random probability of 25% (a replication of the experiment produced similar results). Results showed great variability from one student to another in the ability to recall colors but scores did not correlate with gender or performance in the course. Successful responding to “absent” colors was assumed to be the product of multiple variables, among these being the possibilities of conditioned seeing and intraverbal relations acquired prior to and during the tutorial.