Classical conditioning of beginning reading responses.

The present study describes the first demonstration that laboratory-controlled experimental procedures can lead to the successful acquisition and subsequent retention of classically conditioned beginning reading responses (CCBRRs) in children of both sexes and mean age of 4 yr. Anticipatory instructions combined with higher-order classical conditioning temporally arranged into a trace conditioning paradigm presented for 10 trials for each response to be learned led to beginning reading responses being successfully acquired by 20 children during 95% of the 2,220 total acquisition learning trials and subsequently correctly recalled on 114 of the 222 retention test trials. Findings support the view that perhaps the relatively sudden and sustained acquisition learning curves for reading responses on the second-signalling-system level of behavior in the present study may be quite different from the relatively slow and incremental learning curves usually obtained in classical conditioning of the autonomic type which occur on the first-signalling-system level.