This paper investigated the hypothesis that the rate of reported awareness in verbal operant conditioning is influenced by the interpolation of extinction trials. It also examined a neglected group in the literature, the subjects who report awareness but who do not condition. This group can be as much as 40% of the aware subjects. It is suggested that the most feasible explanation for this group is that they bring different subjective interpretations to the experiment. The kind of awareness statements they offer should differ from aware conditioning subjects. Both hypotheses, the effect of extinction trials and the differing awareness statements of conditioners and non-conditioners, were confirmed. The latter finding is consistent with an unexpected result of the experiment, namely, the differential effect of extinction trials on conditioners and non-conditioners.
A behavioral field approach to operant conditioning: Extinction-induced sanddigging