Efeitos de um Análogo a Esquema Lag N na Produção de Variabilidade de Culturantes

Abstract

Contingency is a conceptual tool for analyzing organism-environment interactions. In the analysis of individual behavior, the operant contingency describes the relationship between a discriminative stimulus, a response, and its consequence. Metacontingency relates as a unit of analysis for culture in the same way that operant contingency serves as a unit of analysis for individual behavior. In the analysis of cultural phenomena, metacontingency describes the relationship between interlocked behavioral contingencies (IBCs) and their respective aggregate products (APs), maintained by cultural consequences (CCs). As with individual contingencies, it is possible to identify a wide range of schedules for presenting CCs. Aiming to contribute to the study of aggregate product variability, this project evaluated the effects of a schedule analogous to the Lag contingency at the operant level to promote variability in aggregate products within a metacontingency. To this end, two experiments were conducted with a total of 27 participants. The task involved trios selecting a sequence of different colors in a matrix. In Experiment 1, the conditions were No Lag and Lag 1 with reversal, followed by a Coupled condition. Experiment 2 consisted of five phases: No Lag, Lag 1, Lag 2, Lag 3, Coupled, and Extinction. In both experiments, the Lag contingency phases produced variability in aggregate products. The results indicate that implementing Lag metacontingencies influenced AP variability, highlighting their potential to select cultural patterns. The experimental phases demonstrated that the variability of cultural units was directly influenced by the progressive increase in Lag requirements. These findings suggest the need for further investigation into the effects of Lag schedules in distinct cultural contexts, evaluating the extent to which they (a) promote the maintenance and transmission of cultural patterns in scenarios with high interactional complexity and (b) allow differentiation between variability induced by programmed contingencies and variability generated by random or contextual factors.