The Effect of Distance between Response Classes on Directional Characteristics of Behavior Change

Liu (1965) has proposed that in learning two response classes (A and B) with different within-chain delay, duration of response, the behavioral change involved in learning response class B after learning response class A is different from that in learning A after learning B. Further, he has introduced two generalizations as follows: (a) The asymmetric behavioral change can be obtained between two response classes so far as they are within the asymptote of Ss. (b) The asymmetric behavioral change is an increasing function of the distance between the two response classes satisfying the condition of (a). This experiment is an attempt to investigate whether these generalizations are plausible and can be applied to psychotics as well as to normal people. But a comparison of psychotics and normals on this subject is not included here.