Groups consistently reinforced for either emotional or non-emotional words showed no verbal-conditioning differences, but both groups subsequently showed facilitated tachistoscopic recognition of emotional words as compared with inconsistently reinforced or unreinforced control groups. These results indicate that increased discrimination of the reinforced response class provided by its consistent pairing with the reinforcing event, rather than actual strengthening of this response class through reinforcement, may be the basic process operating in verbal-conditioning situations.