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THE EFFECTS OF A VARIETY OF INSTRUCTIONS ON HUMAN FIXED‐INTERVAL PERFORMANCE
Author(s) -
LeFrancois Janet R.,
Chase Philip N.,
Joyce James H.
Publication year - 1988
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.1988.49-383
Subject(s) - reinforcement , schedule , variety (cybernetics) , interval (graph theory) , computer science , psychology , artificial intelligence , social psychology , mathematics , operating system , combinatorics
College students were instructed to press a button for points under a single reinforcement schedule or under a variety of reinforcement schedules. Instructions for a single schedule were either specific or minimal. Instructions on a variety of schedules involved specific instructions on eight different schedules of reinforcement. Subsequent to the varied training, responding under a fixed‐interval schedule occurred at a low rate. Both the minimal and specific instruction training led to fixed‐interval responding that was similar to the responding exhibited during training. These findings suggest that under certain conditions instructed behavior is sensitive to changes in contingencies.