Uninstructed Human Responding: Sensitivity of Low‐rate Performance to Schedule Contingencies

Abstract

College students' presses on a telegraph key occasionally turned on a light in the presence of which button presses produced points later exchangeable for money. Initially, responding was maintained by low-rate contingencies superimposed on either random-interval or random-ratio schedules. Later, the low-rate contingencies were relaxed. Low-rate key pressing had been established for some students by shaping and for others by demonstration and written instructions. After the low-rate contingencies were relaxed, higher response rates generally did not increase point earnings with random-interval scheduling, but did so with random-ratio scheduling. In both cases, shaped responding usually increased, and instructed responding usually continued at an unchanged low rate. The insensitivity of instructed responding typically occurred despite contact with the contingencies. The differential sensitivity to schedule contingencies of shaped responding relative to instructed responding is consistent with the different properties of contingency-governed and rulegoverned behavior and is not rate-dependent.Key words: instructions, rule-governed behavior, shaping, contingency sensitivity, DRL, random interval, random ratio, telegraph key, humans Human operant behavior should by definition be sensitive to its consequences. But sometimes human responding is insensitive to such contingency differences as those of fixed-interval (FI) versus fixed-ratio (FR) schedules (e.g., Weiner, 1969Weiner, , 1970, or even those of responsedependent versus response-independent schedules (e.g., Striefel, 1972

The Place of the Human Subject in the Operant Laboratory

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Variáveis que podem interferir no seguir regras de participantes flexíveis e inflexíveis

“…Um problema, no entanto, que ainda não está claro nessa área de pesquisa, é a variabilidade nos resultados (relativos ao seguimento e ao não-seguimento de regras), frequentemente encontrada, dentro de uma mesma condição experimental, em alguns dos estudos (por exemplo, Albuquerque et al, 2003;Hayes, Brownstein, Zettle, Rosenfarb, & Korn, 1986;LeFrancois, Chase, & Joyce, 1988;Newman, Buffi ngton, & Hemmes, 1995;Oliveira & Albuquerque, 2007;Paracampo & Albuquerque, 2004;Shimoff, Catania, & Matthews, 1981).…”

Rule-following and human operant responding: Conceptual and methodological considerations

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