Rule-governance and sensitivity to changes in contingnencies: A literature review and an empirical study.

Abstract

Article 1 is a literature review with a purpose to bring together literature that addresses the issue of insensitivity to changes in contingencies when presented with an instruction, with an experimental approach. The literature have different experimental approaches, where the similar ones have been put together in categories and compared to each other with the purpose of having an overview of the different findings. The different findings in each category are also discussed, and possible ways to advance this research are suggested. Article 2 is an empirical study which is conducted for the purpose to study the effect of changes in contingency on rule-governed behavior in groups and microcultures. Their verbal behavior and transmission of the rule throughout generations was also studied. Two experiments with groups had to choose between two concurrent time schedules of reinforcement. A progressive time schedule of two seconds and fixed time schedule of 30 seconds were the two alternatives. The groups went through two conditions, a history training phase where the instruction was accurate according to the direct contingency, and a testing phase where the contingency changes and the instruction is inaccurate according to the direct contingency. The changes in the contingencies was with diminishing returns in Experiment 1. The members of the groups in Experiment 2 was exchanged by a new member every other session to create generations and microcultures. Two of three groups in Experiment 1, and one of two groups in Experiment 2 showed sensitivity to the changes in the contingency.