Fixed Interval Performance as Related to Subjects’ Verbalizations of the Reinforcement Contingency

Leander, J. David; Lippman, Louis G.; Meyer, Merle E.

doi:10.1007/bf03393795

Cited by 58 publications

(67 citation statements)

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“…Also, no significant relationship emerged between the rate of baseline responding and the probability of subsequently developing a time-or a response-based hypothesis during training (rpb = .28, t = .82, df = 8, p > .05). This is in contrast to verbalizations about the contingency following training on fixed interval schedules of reinforcement, in which lower initial response rates were associated with the development of time-based hypotheses and faster initial response rates were related to the subsequent development of response-based hypotheses (Leander, Lippman, & Meyer, 1968).…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 60%

Human DRL performance, collateral behavior, and verbalization of the reinforcement contingency

Stein

Flanagan

1974

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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Adult human Ss, reinforced for key pressing on a DRL 5-sec schedule of reinforcement, regularly verbalized hypotheses about the behavioral requirements necessary for obtaining reinforcement. High frequencies of overt collateral behavior accompanied response-based hypotheses and low or absent rates of overt collateral behavior accompanied time-based hypotheses. The findings support the conclusion that overt collateral responding can be functionally equivalent to mediative counting during temporally spaced responding.Previous studies examining DRL performance in humans (e.g., Bruner & Revusky, 1961;Laties & Weiss, 1962;Randolph, 1965) have reported regular occurrences of collateral behavior between successively reinforced responses. Recently, Stein & Landis (1973) documented the mediating role human collateral behavior can serve in regulating temporally discriminated DRL performance. In each of these studies, collateral behavior was expressed either overtly, as a chain of motor responses, or covertly, in the form of verbal mediators which emphasized either a time-or response-based self-instruction about the contingency of reinforcement. The present experiment examined the interrrelationships between overt and covert forms of collateral behavior and DRL performance as they occurred at regular intervals throughout training. METHOD SubjectsThe Ss were 10 female introductory psychology students, who received class credit for participation. None had had previous experience with DRL schedules from either coursework or other experiments. ApparatusThe 5s were seated in a room and fitted with a headphone, over which continuous white noise at 60 dB (re .0002 dynes/cm 2 ) was presented to mask extraneous sounds. In front of the S was a chassis containing four adjacent telegraph keys, placed 9.5 em apart, each requiring a downward force of 438 g to be electrically recorded as a response. Directly above each key was a separate light which could be illuminated remotely. A four-digit counter was mounted in the middle of the chassis to indicate the cumulative number of reinforcements (points). A series of relays, timers, and recorders located in an adjacent room was employed to program events and record responses. A one-way mirror between the programming and S rooms allowed continuous visual monitoring of S.Each keypress activated a separate channel of an event recorder, \vith another channel recording reinforcements. The second key from S's right (Key 3) was programmed to produce reinforcement on a DRL 5-sec schedule. Responses on the *Sponsored by F. Robert Brush, Syracuse University, who takes full editorial responsibility for it.tReprints are available from

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Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 60%

Human DRL performance, collateral behavior, and verbalization of the reinforcement contingency

Stein

Flanagan

1974

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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“…High-rate and low-rate Fl performances have been obtained from humans under Fl schedules arranged alone (e.g., Weiner, 1964a) or as components of multiple, chained, or tandem schedules (e.g., Long, 1962Long, , 1963; (2) under Fl schedules with normal children (e.g., Long, Hammack, May, and Campbell, 1958) retarded children (e.g., Orlando, 1961), normal adult humans (e.g., Leander, Lippman, and Meyer, 1968) and adult psychiatric patients (Weiner, 1964a); and, (3) under Fl schedules employing a variety of reinforcers, such as pennies, tokens, trinkets (e.g., Long et al 1958), candy (e.g., Orlando and Bijou, 1960), signal detections only (Blair, 1958), and signal detections and point scores on a counter (Weiner, 1964a) and just scores on a counter (e.g., Lippman and Meyer, 1967).…”

Section: Contentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

CONTROLLING HUMAN FIXED‐INTERVAL PERFORMANCE¹

Weiner

1969

J Exper Analysis Behavior

193

205

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Both high and relatively constant rates of responding without post-reinforcement pauses and lower rates with pauses after reinforcement are produced by human subjects under fixed-interval (FI) schedules. Such FI rates and patterns may be controlled when subjects are provided with different histories of conditioning and different conditions of response cost (reinforcement penalties per response). Subjects with a conditioning history under ratio schedules typically produce high and relatively constant rates of responding under FI schedules; this responding does not change systematically with changes in FT value. In contrast, subjects with a history under schedules which produce little or no responding between reforcements [such as differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) schedules] tend to pause after reinforcement and respond at low rates under FI schedules, whether or not they also have ratio conditioning histories; cost increases the likelihood of this type of performance. For DRL-history subjects, post-reinforcement pauses increase and response rates decrease as FI values increase.

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“…The difference between human and nonhuman schedule response patterns may hold some significance in terms of understanding the underlying factors that control schedule behavior in humans (see Leander, Lippman, & Meyer, 1968;Lippman & Meyer, 1967;Lowe, 1979;Lowe, Harzem, & Hughes, 1978;Weiner, 1964Weiner, , 1969Weiner, , 1970. At present, the reasons for contingency-sensitive versus contingencyinsensitive human responding on schedules are unclear, but differentiated patterns of responding have been linked to factors such as whether the reinforcer requires a consummatory response , the type of reinforcement employed (Lowe, Harzem, & Bagshaw, 1978), whether performance is shaped or instructed by experimenters (Catania et al, 1982;Matthews, Catania, & Shimoff, 1985;Matthews et al, 1977;Shimoff et al, 1981;Shimoff, Matthews, & Catania, 1986), and to the degree that the participants demonstrate contingency or performance awareness (Bradshaw & Reed, 2012;Hayes, Brownstein, Zettle, Rosenfarb, & Korn, 1986b;Wearden & Shimp, 1985b).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…For example, Lippman and Meyer (1967), and Leander et al (1968), reported correlations between operant performance on fixed interval (FI) schedules and participant self-report of the conditioning contingencies. Wearden and Shimp (1985) measured knowledge of how reinforcement was being delivered in terms of participants' opinions of the best way to receive a reward for their responses, which can more accurately be described as a measure of the relationship between their own behavior and its outcome, or performance awareness (PA), and found that schedule-sensitive responding was reliably related to PA in experimental paradigms involving RI schedules.…”

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confidence: 99%

Human performance on random ratio and random interval schedules, performance awareness and verbal instructions

2015

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Humans responded on multiple random-ratio (RR) random-interval (RI) schedules, and their verbalized performance awareness (PA; i.e., their ability to accurately describe what they did) was measured in three experiments. In Experiment 1, instructions informed participants that to earn points, either sometimes rapid responding and sometimes slow responding would work best (accurate instructions); rapid responding would work best (go fast instructions); spaced responding would work best (go slow instructions); or no advice was provided (minimal instructions). In Experiments 2 and 3, participants received either accurate or minimal instructions and were subject to extinction after a multiple RR-RI schedule. In all experiments, both performance awareness, and receiving accurate instructions, were related to schedulesensitive responding, but were unrelated to one another -participants receiving accurate-rate instructions were not more likely to show performance awareness than those exposed to minimal instructions. Both higher performance awareness and exposure to accurate instructions predicted faster extinction in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 3. The current results suggest that performance awareness rather than contingency awareness is more strongly related to humans displaying schedule-typical behavior and that this is not strongly related to any explicit verbal instructions that are given.

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Fixed Interval Performance as Related to Subjects’ Verbalizations of the Reinforcement Contingency

Cited by 58 publications

References 6 publications

Human DRL performance, collateral behavior, and verbalization of the reinforcement contingency

Human DRL performance, collateral behavior, and verbalization of the reinforcement contingency

CONTROLLING HUMAN FIXED‐INTERVAL PERFORMANCE¹

Human performance on random ratio and random interval schedules, performance awareness and verbal instructions

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Fixed Interval Performance as Related to Subjects’ Verbalizations of the Reinforcement Contingency

Cited by 58 publications

References 6 publications

Human DRL performance, collateral behavior, and verbalization of the reinforcement contingency

Human DRL performance, collateral behavior, and verbalization of the reinforcement contingency

CONTROLLING HUMAN FIXED‐INTERVAL PERFORMANCE1

Human performance on random ratio and random interval schedules, performance awareness and verbal instructions

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CONTROLLING HUMAN FIXED‐INTERVAL PERFORMANCE¹