Raia, C. P., Shillingford, S. W., Miller, H. L., Jr., & Baier, P. S. (2000).
Interaction of procedural factors in human performance on yoked schedules.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
74, 265-281.
The differential effects of reinforcement contingencies and
contextual variables on human performance were investigated in
two experiments. In Experiment 1, adult human subjects operated a
joystick in a video game in which the destruction of targets was
arranged according to a yoked variable-ratio variable-interval
schedule of reinforcement. Three variables were examined across
12 conditions: verbal instructions, shaping, and the use of a
consummatory response following reinforcement (i.e., depositing a
coin into a bank). Behavior was most responsive to the
reinforcement contingencies when the consummatory response was
available, responding was established by shaping, and subjects
received minimal verbal instructions about their task. The
responsiveness of variable-interval subjects' behavior varied
more than that of variable-ratio subjects when these contextual
factors were altered. Experiment 2 examined resistance to
instructional control under the same yoked-schedules design.
Conditions varied in terms of the validity of instructions.
Performance on variable-ratio schedules was more resistant to
instructional control than that on variable-interval schedules.
Key words: yoked schedules, instructional control, consummatory
response, shaping, sensitivity, joystick, adult humans