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Laboratory Lore and Research Practices in the Experimental Analysis of Human Behavior: Issues in Instructing Subjects

1988; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 11; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/bf03392456

2196-8918

Carol Pilgrim, James M. Johnston,

Child and Animal Learning Development

The use of instructions to control the behavior of human subjects has been routine in psychological research.In the experimental analysis of human behav- ior this practice has also been common, and it remains so today.Although there are long-standing cautions concerning the role played by instructions (e.g., Azrin, 1958), in more recent years laboratory lore with respect to instruction use has become replete with warnings ofdecreasing schedule sensitivity and increasing sources of extraneous control.These cautions seem to have been in- spired and supported by empirical doc- umentation ofthe control that can be ex- erted by instructional stimuli.For example, it has been shown that not only can instructed responding differ from uninstructed responding (e.g., Shimoff, Ca- tania, & Matthews, 1981), but that the same instructions can have different effects depending on the way in which they are presented and the conditions present at the time of delivery (e.g., Catania, Matthews, & Shimoff, 1982; Galizio, 1979).Furthermore, even subtle variations in the wording of instructions have produced rather dramatic discrepancies in performance on the same operant task (Buskist, Bennett, & Miller, 1981).Be- cause ofthese sorts offindings, the nature of the functional relations between instructional stimuli and operant performance has become an important area of research in its own right.