Efeitos de histórias do comportamento alternativo ao especificado por regra sobre o seguimento de regra

Abstract

Investigating the effects of a long history of continuous reinforcement of an alternative behavior of the one specified by a rule on subsequent discrepant rule-following, 08 undergraduate students were exposed to a matching-to-sample procedure. The task consisted of pointing, in a sequence, to each of three comparison stimuli that had only one thing in common with the sample stimulus and differed in other characteristics. The experiment had four phases. Phase 1 was baseline. Phase 2 begun with a rule corresponding to the contingencies. Phase 3 had an un-signaled change in the reinforcement contingencies, and Phase 4 started with discrepant rule. The results showed that on Phase 1 most of participants had a variable performance. On Phase 2, all participants followed the corresponding rule. On Phase 3, six participants continued to follow the rule of the previous phase and two participants emitted the correct sequence. On Phase 4, four participants followed the discrepant rule; three abandoned rule-following and began to emit the correct sequence; and one abandoned the discrepant rule, but began to emit a sequence that wasn’t reinforced. The data suggests that the participants that presented behavior under rule control on Phases 3, tended to follow the discrepant rule on Phase 4; and, the participants that showed a behavior under control of immediate consequences on Phases 3, tended to abandon the discrepant rule-following on Phase 4. The role of the history of behavior alternative to the one specified by the rule is discussed.