Journal of Experimental Psychology

1971, Vol. 88, No. 1, 26-30

EFFECTS OF BLANK VEMSUS NONINFORMATIVE FEEDBACK AND

"RIGHT" AND "WRCNG" ON RESPONSE REPETITION IN
PAIRED-A ^SOCIATE LEARNING
DAVID RIMM, 1 RONALD ROESCH, RONALD PERRY, AND CHRIS PEEBLES
A rizona State University

The experiment investigated the effect of Informationless feedback and

"Right" and "Wrong" on response repetition in paired-associate learning.
Informationless feedback consisted of either the standard Blank or a redundant
reminder of the two response alternatives, with 5s informed in both cases that
such feedback conveyed no information. Both types of feedback resulted in
an equally strong tendency for 5 to repeat responses which they followed, with
the probability of repetition only slightly less than that obtained for "Right."
"Wrong" resulted in marked response suppression. The findings relating to
Informationless feedback were interpreted as supporting Buchwald's view of
the effect of Blank feedback.

The effect on 5 of not receiving feedback
(i.e., of receiving a Blank) following a re-
sponse has been a source of considerable
controversy. Both Buchwald (1962) and
Levine, Leitenberg, and Richter (1964)
have suggested that in the absence of in-
formation specifying the meaning of Blank,
5 tends to respond as though Blank means
"Right." Spence (1964, 1966a) presented
data which partially supported this hy-
pothesis, with the important modification
that the information value of Blank also
depends upon whether it occurs within a
context of "Right" or "Wrong" feedback.
More recently, Buchwald (1969) contended
that the effect (on probability of repetition)
of a Blank is identical to that obtained
when the feedback is "Right" or "Wrong"
but 5 fails to recall the feedback. Thus,
according to Buchwald (1969), 5 treats the
Blank as if it had no information value
rather than viewing it as confirmation of
the hypothesis which generated his response
(Levine et al., 1964).
If, as Levine et al. (1964) propose, S does
interpret Blank as "Right," this has inter-
esting implications with respect to the
typical 5s in vivo learning history. For
such an individual, correct or appropriate
behavior may have frequently resulted in
no immediate feedback of any sort, perhaps
1 back. For half of the 5s, Informationless
Requests for reprints should be sent to David C.
Rimm, Department of Psychology, Arizona State
University, Tempe, Arizona 8S281.
26
on occasion followed later by positive re-
inforcement; whereas incorrect or inappro-
priate responding might have been followed
regularly by some variety of punishment.
Such an individual would be expected to
have a very strong tendency to interpret
Blank as "Right." If, for such an S,
instead of providing him with Blank feed-
back following certain responses, E simply
reminded him what the response alterna-
tives were (i.e., noninformative feedback),
such feedback would be devoid of any real
information. At the same time, 5 pre-
sumably would be much less likely to inter-
pret it as correct, since in the past such
feedback had not been correlated with ap-
propriate behavior or positive reinforce-
ment. Following this line of reasoning, one
would predict that the probability of re-
sponse repetition, given the noninformative
feedback (NIF), would be considerably less
than that obtaining when the usual Blank
was employed. On the Buchwald (1969)
hypothesis, however, it would be expected
that the probability of repetition following
NIF would not differ from the probability
of repetition following Blank feedback.
In the present investigation, 5 was pre-
sented with a paired-associate learning task
in which his response was followed by
"Right," "Wrong," or Informationless feed-
feedback consisted of the standard Blank
(BL); for the remaining half, such feedback
 INFORMATION FEEDBACK IN PA LEARNING 27

consisted of E reminding 5 what the two
response alternatives were (NIF). For
both groups of Ss, feedback was response
contingent with the sequence of types of
pairs (i.e., types of feedback) random so as
to eliminate possible context or contrast
effects (Spence, 1964). Finally, to "neu-
tralize" further Informationless feedback,
5s in both conditions were informed in ad-
vance that such feedback was in fact in-
tended to convey no information.
METHOD
Subjects.—The 5s were 16 males and 16 females
enrolled in an introductory psychology course at
Arizona State University whose participation ful-
filled a course requirement. Eight males and 8
females were randomly assigned to the BL group,
with the remaining 16 5s assigned to the NIF
condition.
Materials.-—The 14 stimulus words, which were
printed on individual 3 X 5 in. cards, were taken
from a list prepared by Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan
(1968). They were concrete nouns homogeneous
with respect to concreteness (C ranging from 6.35
to 6.96), imagery (I ranging from 5.73 to 6.60) and
meaningfulness (m ranging from 5.81 to 6.96).
Procedure.-—The 5s were informed that they were
to learn to associate the numbers one or two to each
of the 14 stimulus words, with "one" being the
correct response for 7 of the words and "two" correct
for the remaining 7. Each 5 in the BL group was
told that immediately following his response, E
would provide oral feedback consisting of "Right"
which meant he had been correct, or "Wrong"
which meant he had been incorrect, or E would say
nothing. 5 was told that half of the time "nothing"
meant he had been incorrect.
For seven of the pairs, following a correct response,
E said "Right" and, following an error, E remained
silent. For the remaining seven, following a correct
response, E remained silent and, following an error,
E said "Wrong." The task was self-paced and, when
E responded, it was immediately after 5 had given
his response. Following presentation of the entire
TABLE 1
MEAN PROBABILITY OF A REPETITION FOLLOWING INFORMATIONLESS FEEDBACK
list, the cards were shuffled and the list was presented
again, with this procedure continuing until 5 had
completed a total of 14 trials.
The procedure for 5s in the NIF condition was
identical to the above except that Informationless
feedback consisted of E reminding 5 that "one or
two was correct" with 5 informed at the outset that
such feedback indicated that he had been correct
half of the time and incorrect half of the time.
RESULTS
Since the principle purpose of the study
was to examine response repetition as a
function of feedback type, the data are
presented in the form of sequential response
repetition probabilities for Informationless
feedback, "Right," and "Wrong."
The data presented in Table 1 show a
marked trial by trial increase in the proba-
bility of response repetition (i.e., the proba-
bility that a response occurring on Trial N
is repeated on Trial N + 1) for both types
of Informationless feedback for both sexes.
A three-way mixed analysis of variance
(Edwards, 1968, p. 287) revealed a highly
significant trials effect, F (12, 336) = 20.66,
p < .005, a significant sex effect, F (1, 28)
= 9.75, p < .005, and a significant Trials
X Sex interaction, F (12, 336) = 3.15,
p < .005. The latter two significant effects
corroborate a trend which is apparent upon
visual inspection of these data: Females
tended to repeat response with a higher
probability than males over early trials,
but by Trials 10 or 11 the sex differences
disappeared as both sexes began to ap-
proach an asymptote.
Of primary concern is the effect of em-
ploying the two different types of Informa-
tionless feedback, which did not approach
significance. The remaining interactions

Trial
Snh'prf rl rl
2 3 4 s 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Male
BL .52 .56 .52 .65 .62 .78 .84 .75 .81 .91 .94 .99 .91
NIF .60 ,57 .52 .69 .72 .65 .73 .80 .91 .87 .88 1.0 .93
Female
BL .63 .82 .76 .79 .90 .89 .90 1.0 .99 .93 .94 .98 .97
NIF .66 .82 .83 .76 .84 .85 .86 .88 .72 .88 .86 .89 .94
28 D. RIMM, R. ROESCH, R. PERRY, AND C. PEEBLES

TABLE 2
MEAN PROBABILITY OF A REPETITION FOLLOWING "RIGHT" FEEDBACK
Trial
q , . J J

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ll 12 13 14

Male
BL .56 .63 .66 .74 .79 .91 .77 .92 .85 .95 .98 1.0 1.0
NIF .52 .61 .67 .66 .56 .88 .78 .81 .93 .95 .97 .96 .94
Female
BL .75 .78 .89 .91 .88 1.0 1.0 1.0 .98 .98 1.0 .98 1.0
NIF .66 .81 .89 .77 .89 .90 .98 .93 .91 .90 .94 .98 1.0

were also nonsignificant. Thus while both
sexes showed very strong tendencies to
repeat responses which had been followed
by Informationless feedback, whether such
feedback was in the form of a Blank or in
the form of a reminder of the response
alternatives appears to have made abso-
lutely no difference.
Table 2 presents the probability of repe-
tition following "Right." These results
generally parallel those obtained for Infor-
mationless feedback. The analysis of
variance again revealed a significant trials
effect, F (12, 336) = 14.12, p < .005, a
significant sex effect, F (1, 28) = 11.33,
p < .005, and a significant Sex X Trials
interaction, F (12, 336) = 1.94, p < .025.
As was the case for Informationless feed-
back, females showed a greater tendency
than males to repeat response following
"Right" over early trials, with the differ-
ence disappearing over later trials.
As might have been expected, 5s run
under the two different types of Informa-
tionless feedback did not differ in their re-
sponse to "Right." The Sex X Feedback
interaction was also nonsignificant, as was
the Trials X Feedback interaction and the
Sex X Trials X Feedback interaction.
Of interest is the relative effectiveness of
"Right" and Informationless feedback in
facilitating response repetition. For all 16
males (collapsing across types of Informa-
tionless feedback), the mean probability of
a repetition (averaged over all trials) fol-
lowing "Right" exceeded the mean proba-
bility of a repetition following Information-
less feedback by .055, with 13 of 16 5s
showing a higher average repetition of re-
sponse probability following "Right" (bi-
nomial probability, p < .025). For female
Ss, the comparable mean difference was
.057, with 14/16 5s showing a higher proba-
bility following "Right" (binomial proba-
bility, p < .003). Males and females did
not differ significantly with respect to the
relative effects of the two classes of feed-
back, / (30) = 1.33. Thus, "Right" was
more effective in facilitating response repe-
tition than Informationless feedback. It
should be pointed out, however, that the
magnitude of the differences are quite small
relative to the overall effects of either
"Right" or Informationless feedback on
response repetition.
For 5s in all conditions, response repeti-
tion following "Wrong" feedback was not
possible for 160 out of 416 trials (32 5s X 13
trials) because, on the prior trial, 5 failed
to emit any responses which received
"Wrong." This suggests that "Wrong"
was quite effective in suppressing respond-
ing. To examine the effect of "Wrong," a
somewhat different method of data analysis
is required since no probability weighting
can be assigned a trial for which repetition,
a priori, is impossible. For those trials for
which repetition was possible, for each 5,
the probabilities of repetition following
"Wrong" were vincentized into two blocks,
each containing an equal number of trials
(with the median trial excluded when the
total number of trials was odd). These
data appear in Table 3.
An analysis of variance revealed a sig-
nificant trial block effect, F (1, 28)
= 21.82, p < .005. The effect of feedback
was significant, F (1, 28) = 4.96, p < .05,
and the effect of sex approached signifi-
cance, F (1, 28) = 2.91, p < .10. None
 INFORMATION FEEDBACK IN PA LEARNING
of the remaining effects approached sig-
nificance. The significant and near sig-
nificant effects of feedback and sex can be
attributed to a single extraordinary small
cell mean (females, BL, Block 2). To
reach significance (Scheffe, 1953, a. = .10)
a mean difference must exceed .23, and it
is clear from Table 3 that the only pair-wise
comparisons for sex and feedback which
approach this value involve this cell mean.
While the occurrence of one highly dis-
crepant cell mean may be of some interest
in its own right, this additionl analysis
tends to weaken any conclusion affirming
differences attributable to either sex or
feedback.
Another way to assess the effect of
"Wrong" is to examine the number of trials
prior to total or almost total suppression of
responses scheduled to receive "Wrong."
For 74% of the 5s, when two consecutive
trials did occur for which repetition follow-
ing "Wrong" was impossible because no
"Wrong" responses occurred on the pre-
vious trial, no additional "Wrong" re-
sponses were emitted. The mean number
of trials prior to the first of these two trials
was as follows: Males, BL, 9.13; males,
NIF, 11.00; females, BL, 7.25; females,
NIF, 9.13. Neither the main effects nor
the interaction approached significance.
Taken together, these two analyses of
the effects of "Wrong" feedback suggest a
definite suppressing effect of such feedback
while providing little evidence for a dif-
ferential effect due to sex or type of Infor-
mationless feedback.
DISCUSSION
The principal finding of the present investi-
gation was that Informationless feedback fa-
cilitated the same high degree of response
repetition whether the feedback was in the
form of the standard Blank or in the form of a
redundant statement describing the response
alternatives. The overall effects were nearly
as potent as that obtained when S received
"Right" feedback. This was so in spite of the
fact that S was informed at the outset that
Informationless feedback indicated that he
was as likely incorrect as correct and in spite
of the fact that Informationless items appeared
29
TABLE 3
MEAN PROBABILITY OF A REPETITION FOLLOWING
"WRONG" FEEDBACK (EXCLUDING
TRIALS WHERE REPETITION
WAS IMPOSSIBLE)
Trial block
1 2
Males
BL .41 .26
NIF .52 .27
Females
BL .44 .04
NIF .46 .25
in a random sequence which included pairs re-
ceiving "Right" and "Wrong" as well, so that
initially at least, any contrast effects (Spence,
1966a) should have balanced out. It might be
argued that the typical 5's learning history
favored his equating Blank with "Right" to
such a degree that he was compelled to ignore
the information he initially received about its
information value or that he simply forgot
what he had been told about Blank. While it
is not at all difficult to reconstruct a learning
history which would account for S's interpret-
ing Blank as "Right," an equally plausible
account for why 5 would likewise interpret
"one or two was correct" as confirming his re-
sponse is not readily forthcoming, nor is it in
the interest of parsimony to assume that while
Blank and NIF appeared to have had quali-
tatively identical effects on repetition proba-
bility, they operated through different
mechanisms.
The present data, then, do not tend to favor
the view put forth by Levine et al. (1964), that
Blank confirms 5's response. On the other
hand, these results are in accord with Buchwald
(1969), who assumes that Blank is functionally
equivalent to "Right" or "Wrong" feedback
which is forgotten (ergo, Blank is equivalent
to NIF or to no feedback at all). If the Buch-
wald (1969) hypothesis is correct, the high
asymptotic probabilities observed for both In-
formationless feedback conditions indicate the
cumulative effect on recall of repeated expo-
sure to a given item in the absence of any cor-
rective feedback.
One rather compelling reason for assuming
that 5s do equate'Blank with "Right" is that
they sometimes say that they do during post-
experimental interviews (Spence, 1966a,
1966b).*In the Spence studies, 5s were not in-
formed about the information value of Blank
30 D. RIMM, R. ROESCH, R. PERRY, AND C. PEEBLES
Such a procedure might favor equating Blank
with "Right," although there exists an in-
triguing alternative possibility that 5 repeats
his response following Blank solely because he
is able to recall the response (Buchwald, 1969),
but later concludes (rationalizes) that Blank
must have meant "Right" since it correlated
with response repetition.
For both "Right" and Informationless feed-
back, female 5s tended to approach asymptote
more rapidly than males. One might interpret
this as supporting the functional equivalence
of these two forms of feedback. However,
according to Buchwald (1969), covert recall is
independent of feedback; applying this to the
present results, if under Informationless feed-
back the recall for females differed from that
obtained for males, then under "Right" feed-
back, performance for females should similarly
differ from performance for males since per-
formance under "Right" also includes the
recall factor.
Had contrast (the tendency for Blank, or its
functional equivalent, to assume reinforcing
value opposite to feedback to which it is
juxtaposed) been an important source of
variance in the present investigation, one would
have expected repetition probability following
Informationless feedback to decline with trials
rather than increase. This is because the
number of "Wrong"s delivered to S declined
to near zero over the 14 trials, whereas the
number of "Right"s tended to increase. By
contrast, Informationless feedback might have
been expected to take on a negative valence,
thereby suppressing responses which it fol-
lowed. Such was clearly not the case, although
the present investigation can hardly be viewed
as a fair test of contrast since an effort was
made to minimize such effects. Additionally,
there is evidence that contrast may influence
the valence of Blank feedback (Richards, 1970 ;
Spence, 1964).
Consistent with some previous findings
(e.g., Mosberg, 1970; Rimm & Biggs, 1969),
the present experiment provides support for
the view that "Wrong" does lead to suppres-
sion of responses which it follows, given a small
number of response alternatives. However,
the tendency to emit very few "Wrong" re-
sponses during latter trials in the present study
also reflects the power of Informationless feed-
back to e|ffect response repetition. Whether as
a result of poor recall, or the aversive effects of
"Wrong," 5 happened to change his response
following "Wrong," he would then receive
Informationless feedback which would tend to
favor his repeating the second response
throughout the remainder of the experiment.
REFERENCES
BUCHWALD, A. M. Variations in the apparent
effects of "Right" and "Wrong" on subsequent
behavior. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal
Behavior, 1962, 1, 71-78.
BUCHWALD, A. M. Effects of "Right" and "Wrong"
on subsequent behavior: A new interpretation.
Psychological Review, 1969, 76, 132-143.
EDWARDS, A. L. Experimental design in psychologi-
cal research. New York: Holt, Rinehart, &
Winston, 1968.
LEVINE, M., LEITENBERG, H., & RICHTER, M. The
Blank Trials Law: The equivalence of positive re-
inforcement and non-reinforcement. Psychologi-
cal Review, 1964, 71, 94-104.
MOSBERG, L. Response elimination in noncorrec-
tion paired-associates learning. Journal of Ex-
perimental Psychology, 1970, 83, 94-100.
PAIVIO, A., YUILLE, J. C., & MADIGAN, S. A. Con-
creteness, imagery, and raeaningfulness values of
92S nouns. Journal of Experimental Psychology,
1968, 76 (1, Pt. 2).
RICHARDS, W. S. The effect of variations in pattern-
ing of feedback and type of prefeedback trial ex-
posures on response repetition following verbal
outcomes. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
Arizona State University, 1970.
RIMM, D. C., & BIGGS, B. Supplementary report:
Effects of variations in interpair interval and type
of feedback on paired-associate learning. Journal
of Verbal Learning and Behavior, 1969, 8, 159-160.
SCHEFFE, H. A. A method for judging all contrasts
in the analysis of variance. Biometrika, 1953, 40,
87-104.
SPENCE, J. T. Verbal discrimination performance
under different verbal reinforcement combina-
tions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1964,
67, 195-197.
SPENCE, J. T. Effects of verbal reinforcement com-
bination and instructional condition on the per-
formance of a problem-solving task. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 1966, 3,
163-170. (a)
SPENCE, J. T. The effects of verbal reinforcement
combination on the performance of a four-alterna-
tive discrimination task. Journal of Verbal Learn-
ing and Verbal Behavior, 1966, 5, 421-428. (b)
(Received August 15, 1970)