Mudanças na contingência e variabilidade comportamental: o efeito de regras táticas e estratégicas

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Paula Grandi de
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_SP
• Texto Completo: https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/19451
• topic: Regra; Comportamento governado por regras; Instrução tática; Rule; Rule-governed behavior; Tactical instruction; CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::PSICOLOGIA::PSICOLOGIA EXPERIMENTAL

The present research has investigated the effect of the supply of instructions or the lack of it with different formulations (1) in the obtention of a response sensitive to the schedule and (2) in the resistance to the response’s change when faced with alterations in the contingency. The participants were submitted to three experimental conditions. The study was accomplished with 15 participants and it used a reversal single subject design (ABCA). During the experimental sessions, the participants were exposed to concurrent reinforcement schedules VI VI that occurred simultaneously in two rectangles (red and blue) presented on the screen. Only one of the rectangles was active at a time and a change button allowed the alternation of the active rectangle. A click on the active rectangle gave access to mathematical operations that the participant should solve. During an evaluation session it was assured that the participants were able to solve the operations with precision. On the experimental sessions, a correct answer to the mathematical operation was followed by a point according to the reinforcement schedule VI in force on the selected rectangle. In the condition No Instruction (SI), no instruction that described how to distribute the response between alternatives was presented. In the Strategic Instruction (IE) condition, an instruction that described a strategy was provided to the participants so that they could determine the best way to distribute the response, allowing them to identify for themselves the pattern of answers that was more advantageous. In the Tactical Instruction condition, an instruction that specified an exact response pattern to be followed (IT1) or the exact pattern for the point delivery was provided to allow the participant to earn the biggest quantity of points. The participants’ behavior choice was analyzed, measured by the parameters a of the generalized matching law and the behavior variability, measured by the clicks on the change button. The experimental sessions were composed by two stages: (1) Learning Contingency (LC), in which it was possible to test the point delivery rate; (2) Test Contingency (TC), where the earned points were exchanged by a voucher. The schedules of reinforcement were subsequently reversed between the rectangles. The results indicated that the strategic instruction consistently produced a response according to the schedule in force and not resistant to change when the contingencies were altered. On the other hand, the tactical instruction didn’t produce a consistent response according to the schedule, so it wasn’t possible to investigate the presence of resistance to change when the schedules were reversed. The condition without instruction produced a response markedly indifferentiated between the two alternatives. An influence of the experimental history was verified in the performance of the different experimental conditions. Even though the participants that were first exposed to strategic instruction presented a high number of clicks on the change button, the results indicate that not only varying between alternatives but changing the response in other ways can be important in obtaining a response according to the schedule. It is discussed how the characteristics of the VI schedule, the methodology used and the formulation of the rule could have influenced the results obtained with tactical instructions