Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bradshaw, Ceri A.
• Freegard, Gary
• Reed, Phil

Titel

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

Ist Teil von

• Learning & behavior, 2015-09, Vol.43 (3), p.272-288

Ort / Verlag

New York: Springer US

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 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 schedule-sensitive 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.