The effects of variability on verbally-governed behavior / O efeito da produção de variabilidade sobre o comportamento verbalmente controlado

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

The present study aimed at evaluating the effects on behavior variability of manipulating antecedent irrelevant conditions of verbally governed behavior. 19 college students aged 17 to 27 years were recruited. Students worked on a computer task. On each trial 3 windows with the same different shapes moved for 3 seconds. If the shapes were the same on the 3 windows when they stopped points were delivered. This outcome was determined by the rate of the participants clicking of the mouse on a button on the screen. Participants were assigned to a high rate group (10 or more responses on each trial) or to a low rate group (1 to 3 responses on each trial) on Condition I. A correspondent instruction describing the rate as the reinforcement criterion was present for all participants on this condition. On Condition II the contingency of reinforcement was reversed for all participants and participants were further assigned to 3 new subgroups according to the instructions on the screen: (a) the instruction present on the previous condition was maintained, (b) there was no instruction, (c) a new instruction (Discover how to win).was shown on the screen. Another group of participants was not submitted to Condition III. On Condition III there were no changes on the contingencies of reinforcement, instructions were absent, and other irrelevant elements of the screen (screen color, shapes on the windows, and windows positions) were changed. Results showed that 14 (out of 19) participants did no respond according to the instructions at the onset of Condition I, nevertheless 16 participants were systematically responding according to the contingencies (and instructions) at the end of the condition. 14 participants were submitted to Condition II: 12 of them did not produce reinforcement at the beginning of the condition, but at the end of the condition 5 of them were consistently behaving according to the contingencies and 7 were not. At the onset of Condition III there was variability on the latency and/or rate of responding of all 18 participants, and for 5 of the 12 participants whose behavior was not under contingency control on Condition II such variation was enough to promote the selection of a new response pattern that met the contingency. The initial schedule of reinforcement (of low or high response rate) was highly correlated with participants performances when (and thereafter) contingencies changed: Only 1 of the 9 participants of the high rate group on Condition I was not responding in accordance with the contingency at the end of the experiment, but 6 of the participants of the low rate group on Condition I were still not being systematically reinforced at the end of the study

ASSUNTO(S)

comportamento verbalmente controlado psicologia experimental comportamento verbal variability rule regra variabilidade verbally-governed behavior

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