Instructions, multiple schedules, and extinction: Distinguishing rule-governed from schedule-controlled behavior.
College students can fake schedule sensitivity with rule-following—extinction is the quickest way to see if the schedule truly controls the behavior.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers asked college students to press a lever under two schedules. Some sessions paid every 18 presses. Others paid only if you waited six seconds between presses. The team also told students to press fast, slow, or gave no rule. After training, they turned the pay-off off to see what the students would do.
The goal was to spot real schedule control under the noise of rule-following.
What they found
When money still came out, most students copied the speed they were told. Their graphs looked schedule-true even when they were just obeying words. Once extinction started, only students whose earlier pattern could not be explained by the instruction kept the trained difference. The rest flattened out, proving their behavior was rule-governed, not schedule-shaped.
How this fits with other research
Charlop et al. (1990) later showed why some students stayed sensitive. Their follow-up found that unless the students varied their pace during training, the words stayed locked in and the real contingency never took over. The two papers fit like puzzle pieces: C et al. shows the problem; H et al. shows the cure.
Hilton et al. (2010) took the same multiple-schedule trick into the real world. One adult with intellectual disability learned to approach staff only when a black lanyard meant reinforcement and to hold back when it was off. The lanyard worked like the lab lights, giving caregivers a portable signal for extinction time.
Waite et al. (1972) had already shown that kids, too, can show contrast under multiple schedules. Their rates jumped in the paying component when the other side switched to extinction. C et al. deepens that story by warning that the jump might be words, not true schedule control, unless you test in extinction.
Why it matters
Before you trust that a client's differential responding is schedule-shaped, run a brief extinction probe. If the pattern collapses, you are dealing with rule control, not contingency control. Drop the verbal prompt, add response variation, or insert salient stimuli like a colored card to let the real schedule take over. This guards against false positives in both clinic and classroom.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Schedule sensitivity has usually been examined either through a multiple schedule or through changes in schedules after steady-state responding has been established. This study compared the effects of these two procedures when various instructions were given. Fifty-five college students responded in two 32-min sessions under a multiple fixed-ratio 18/differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate 6-s schedule, followed by one session of extinction. Some subjects received no instructions regarding the appropriate rates of responding, whereas others received instructions to respond slowly, rapidly, or both. Relative to the schedule in operation, the instructions were minimal, partially inaccurate, or accurate. When there was little schedule sensitivity in the multiple schedule, there was little in extinction. When apparently schedule-sensitive responding occurred in the multiple schedule, however, sensitivity in extinction occurred only if differential responding in the multiple schedule could not be due to rules supplied by the experimenter. This evidence shows that rule-governed behavior that occurs in the form of schedule-sensitive behavior may not in fact become schedule-sensitive even though it makes contact with the scheduled reinforcers.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1986 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1986.46-137