Instructed versus shaped human verbal behavior: Interactions with nonverbal responding.
Words you shape beat words you state when the payoff table flips.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Adults earned points for finishing sentences with guesses. Some guesses were shaped through reinforcement. Others were simply told. Researchers then checked if the guesses controlled button pressing when the payoff rules flipped.
What they found
Shaped guesses kept the button pattern steady even when the money now came from the opposite choice. Told guesses lost control as soon as the payoff changed.
How this fits with other research
Eugenia Gras et al. (2003) saw the same pattern with children who had disabilities. Reinforcing easy requests first, then harder ones, built lasting compliance—just like shaping built lasting verbal control here.
Pierce et al. (1994) added a prompt plus a cue to teach help requests. The cue carried the control, echoing how the shaped words here carried the control, not the bare instruction.
Ozen et al. (2022) compared two prompting styles head-to-head. Their alternating-treatments design mirrors the side-by-side test of shaping versus instructing in this 1982 paper.
Why it matters
When you want rules to stick, shape them in the moment instead of just stating them. Next time you teach a safety rule or a social script, reinforce early approximations and let the learner feel the contingency. The words will then keep working when the payoff scene shifts.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Undergraduate students' presses on left and right buttons occasionally made available points exchangeable for money. Blue lights over the buttons were correlated with multiple random-ratio random-interval components; usually, the random-ratio schedule was assigned to the left button and the random-interval to the right. During interruptions on the multiple schedule, students filled out sentence-completion guess sheets (e.g., The way to earn points with the left button is to...). For different groups, guesses were shaped with differential points also worth money (e.g., successive approximations to "press fast" for the left button), or were instructed (e.g., Write "press slowly" for the left button), or were simply collected. Control of rate of pressing by guesses was examined in individual cases by reversing shaped or instructed guesses, by instructing pressing rates, and/or by reversing multiple-schedule contingencies. Shaped guesses produced guess-consistent pressing even when guessed rates opposed those characteristic of the contingencies (e.g., slow random-ratio and fast random-interval rates), whereas guesses and rates of pressing rarely corresponded after unsuccessful shaping of guesses or when guessing had no differential consequences. Instructed guesses and pressing were inconsistently related. In other words, when verbal responses were shaped (contingency-governed), they controlled nonverbal responding. When they were instructed (rule-governed), their control of nonverbal responding was inconsistent: the verbal behavior sometimes controlled, sometimes was controlled by, and sometimes was independent of the nonverbal behavior.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1982 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1982.38-233