Abstract
Compliance with instructions to respond on response-independent schedules was studied to see if schedule insensitivity is determined by reinforcement of inappropriate responding or if discriminative features of schedules support inappropriate instructional control. College students were asked to prevent unpreventable mixed random-, mixed fixed-, or fixed-time tones by pressing left and right panels and, during interspersed timeout periods, to guess about how to prevent tones. Subjects responding on mixed schedules produced the highest rates and were likely to report that they prevented tones. Fixed-time subjects pressed at the lowest rates and never reported that tones were preventable. Schedule-insensitive compliance under mixed schedules was not reinforced by response-independent stimuli; instead, compliance was occasioned by fluctuations in stimuli that gave the appearance of a contingency, and fixed-time subjects discriminated that responses were ineffective. This suggests that events with discriminative properties that are compatible with instructed behavior occasion compliance, whereas those with incompatible properties do not.
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This material is based upon work supported under a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship. I give special thanks to Lynn Hammond and Phil Hineline for their suggestions and help in obtaining essential resources, and to Phil and Julie Schweitzer for their critical reading of the manuscript. Subject payments were obtained in a research grant to Philip N. Hineline and me through a Temple University Biomedical Research Grant from the National Institute of Health.
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Cerutti, D.T. Discriminative Versus Reinforcing Properties of Schedules as Determinants of Schedule Insensitivity in Humans. Psychol Rec 41, 51–67 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395093
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395093