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INSTRUCTED VERSUS SHAPED HUMAN VERBAL BEHAVIOR: INTERACTIONS WITH NONVERBAL RESPONDING
Author(s) -
Catania A. Charles,
Matthews Byron A.,
Shimoff Eliot
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.1982.38-233
Subject(s) - nonverbal communication , psychology , interval (graph theory) , schedule , sentence , social psychology , reinforcement , differential effects , control (management) , cognitive psychology , audiology , communication , mathematics , computer science , artificial intelligence , medicine , combinatorics , operating system
Undergraduate students' presses on left and right buttons occasionally made available points exchangeable for money. Blue lights over the buttons were correlated with multiple random‐ratio random‐interval components; usually, the random‐ratio schedule was assigned to the left button and the random‐interval to the right. During interruptions on the multiple schedule, students filled out sentence‐completion guess sheets (e.g., The way to earn points with the left button is to …). For different groups, guesses were shaped with differential points also worth money (e.g., successive approximations to “press fast” for the left button), or were instructed (e.g., Write “press slowly” for the left button ), or were simply collected. Control of rate of pressing by guesses was examined in individual cases by reversing shaped or instructed guesses, by instructing pressing rates, and/or by reversing multiple‐schedule contingencies. Shaped guesses produced guess‐consistent pressing even when guessed rates opposed those characteristic of the contingencies (e.g., slow random‐ratio and fast random‐interval rates), whereas guesses and rates of pressing rarely corresponded after unsuccessful shaping of guesses or when guessing had no differential consequences. Instructed guesses and pressing were inconsistently related. In other words, when verbal responses were shaped (contingency‐governed), they controlled nonverbal responding. When they were instructed (rule‐governed), their control of nonverbal responding was inconsistent: the verbal behavior sometimes controlled, sometimes was controlled by, and sometimes was independent of the nonverbal behavior.