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Effects of probability of reinforcement and social stimulus consistency on imitation.

1971; American Psychological Association; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1037/h0030843

1939-1315

David W. Britt,

Autism Spectrum Disorder Research

The present series of studies evaluated the effects of probability of reinforcement and degree of stimulus consistency on imitation in ambiguous, competitive situations. Three experiments are reported, each addressed to a different specific problem concerning the relationship among these variables and the elimination of alternative explanations for the observed results. In general, the following conclusions emerged: (a) Subjects in ambiguous, competitive situations tend to imitate stooges to the degree that they are competent (i.e., to the degree that they are instrumental in procuring reinforcement) ; (ft) the relationship between probability of reinforcement and imitation is considerably stronger when the stooges agree (consistent stimuli) than when they disagree (inconsistent stimuli), a finding that was interpreted in terms of the credibility of the consistent stimuli; (c) imitation of consistent social stimuli is more stable than imitation of inconsistent social stimuli. This study reports the findings of three experiments investigating the relationship among reinforcement probability (competence of social stimulus source), consistency of modeling cues (level of agreement of social stimulus source), and imitation (matching the response of model). These studies take as their starting point the probability-matching law postulated by Estes (19S8), and pursued by Kanareff and Lanzetta (1958, 1960a, 1960b, 1961; Lanzetta & Kanareff, 1959) in a series of studies. Estes's matching law requires no restrictions on the probability of reinforcement, and should apply whenever an individual's behavior can be described in terms of mutually exclusive response classes, one of which is reinforced after every response. The cumulative proportion of the response class and the corresponding reinforcing event tend toward equality. Reinforcing events include both those situations where the subject makes a correct response and is reinforced for it and those situations where the subject makes an incorrect response and is punished for it. The Kanareff and Lanzetta (1958, 1960a, 1960b, 1961; Lanzetta & Kanareff, 1959) series was designed to apply the probabilitymatching law to the study of imitation of a