Análise de respostas autocontroladas e impulsivas em participantes flexíveis e inflexíveis

Abstract

Considering: a) the suggestion that the self-controlled behavior of humans occurs under the control of future consequences reported in rules and that impulsive behavior occurs under the control of immediate consequences; b) the experimental results indicating that individuals classified as flexible, under some conditions, tend not to follow discrepant rules and that individuals classified as inflexible, under some conditions, tend to follow discrepant rules and, c) that this behavioral variability has been attributed to different pre-experimental stories; it was asked whether the behavioral variability observed in some studies investigating self-controlled behavior could also be attributed to differences in participants' pre-experimental histories. Experiment 1 investigated whether participants classified as flexible and inflexible, according to the Rehfisch Stiffness Scale (1958), would emit more impulsive responses or more self-controlled responses, when they were exposed to an experimental design similar to that used by Flora et al. (1992). Additionally, it verified whether there would be a correspondence between the classification as flexible or inflexible, the impulsive or self-controlled experimental performance and the result of the application of the Barratt Impulsivity Scale - BIS11. Twelve university students participated, six classified as flexible and six as inflexible. Of these, eight showed an impulsive response, one presented a self-controlled response and three gave a response considered neutral. All participants had an intermediate rating on the Impulsiveness Scale. Experiment 2 had the same objective as Experiment 1, using a modified experimental design, in which participants were required to describe the experimental task, increasing the number of attempts to demonstrate the dependency relationships between responses and consequences, inserting sentences indicating the gains obtained and reduced the total number of trials of the experiment. Eight university students participated, four flexible and four inflexible. Of these, one presented an impulsive response, six issued a self-controlled response and one issued a response considered neutral. In the debriefing, all participants understood the objective of the task, but two participants in the Flexible Group did not correctly describe the contingencies. All participants had an intermediate rating on the Impulsiveness Scale. In both experiments, no association was observed between flexibility and inflexibility, impulsivity and self-control. Although not statistically significant, a tendency was observed for the Inflexible Group to issue more self-controlled responses in relation to the Flexible Group. It was also verified that the variables manipulated in Experiment 2 favored selfcontrolled responding in the task.