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HUMAN OPERANT PERFORMANCE: SENSITIVITY AND PSEUDOSENSITIVITY TO CONTINGENCIES
Author(s) -
Shimoff Eliot,
Matthews Byron A.,
Catania A. Charles
Publication year - 1986
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.1986.46-149
Subject(s) - reinforcement , schedule , sensitivity (control systems) , interval (graph theory) , psychology , operant conditioning , statistics , sentence , contingency , component (thermodynamics) , social psychology , mathematics , audiology , computer science , artificial intelligence , medicine , combinatorics , linguistics , philosophy , physics , electronic engineering , engineering , thermodynamics , operating system
Undergraduates' button presses occasionally produced points exchangeable for money. Left and right buttons were initially correlated with multiple random‐ratio (RR) and random‐interval (RI) components, respectively. During interruptions of the multiple schedule, students filled out sentence‐completion guess sheets describing the schedules, and points were contingent upon the accuracy of guesses. To test for sensitivity to schedule contingencies, schedule components were repeatedly reversed between the two buttons. Pressing rates were consistently higher in ratio than in interval components even when feedback for guesses was discontinued, demonstrating sensitivity to the difference between ratio and interval contingencies. The question was whether this sensitivity was based directly on the contingencies or whether it was rule‐governed. For two students, when multiple RR RI schedules were changed to multiple RI RI schedules, rates became low in both components of the multiple RI RI schedule; however, subsequent prevention of point deliveries for the first few responses in any component produced high rates in that component. For a third student, response rates became higher in the RI component that provided the lower rate of reinforcement. In each case, performance was inconsistent with typical effects of the respective schedules with nonhuman organisms; it was therefore plausible to conclude that the apparently contingency‐governed performances were instead rule‐governed.