Differential latency and selective nondisclosure in verbal self-reports.
People hesitate or skip reporting failures because past punishment taught them to hide mistakes.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The lab asked adults to press keys on a computer. Each key gave either a success or failure message.
After every trial, people could say what happened, say nothing, or press a nondisclosure key. The computer clocked how long each answer took.
What they found
Failure reports came out slower. People also hit the nondisclosure key more often after failures.
The pattern fits a simple rule: past punishment for admitting mistakes makes us pause or hide bad news.
How this fits with other research
Glenn (1993) used the same lab setup but looked at accuracy scores versus signal-detection stats. The later paper keeps the stats and adds timing and skip options.
Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. (2024) tested kids with language disorders. Self-report missed many bullying victims, echoing the adult pattern of hiding negative news.
Lemons et al. (2015) showed only 62 % of adults with IDD could give scorable answers. The basic pause-or-hide effect may not apply if the person cannot answer at all.
Why it matters
When you ask clients about errors, problem behavior, or missed goals, expect delays or silence. Build in wait time, offer multiple response modes, and cross-check with other data. Do not treat slow or missing answers as defiance; treat them as signs of a punishment history you can shape with safer contingencies.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Several previous studies have examined the correspondence between self-reports and the delayed identity match-to-sample performance they supposedly described. The present two experiments used similar procedures to explore different characteristics of the self-reports. In both studies, match-to-sample responses were successful (earned points) if they were both correct and faster than a time limit. Following each response, a computer-presented query asked whether the response had been successful, and subjects replied by pressing a "Yes" or "No" button. Experiment 1 analyzed self-report latencies from a previously-published study (Critchfield, 1993a). Latencies generally were longer for self-reports of failure than for self-reports of success. In Experiment 1, a "Yes" or "No" self-report was required to advance the session. In Experiment 2, self-reports were optional. In addition to "Yes" and "No" buttons, subjects could press a third button (a "nondisclosure" option) to remove the self-report query without providing a "Yes" or "No" answer. Across a range of conditions, nondisclosures always occurred more frequently after match-to-sample failures than after successes (i.e., under conditions in which a self-report of failure would be appropriate). The effects observed in the two experiments are consistent with a history of differential punishment for uncomplimentary self-reports, which casual observation and some descriptive studies suggest is a common experience in United States culture. The research necessary to explore this notion should produce data that are of interest to psychologists both within and outside of Behavior Analysis.
The Analysis of verbal behavior, 1996 · doi:10.1007/BF03392906