Rule-governed behavior and sensitivity to changing consequences of responding.
Spoken rules can glue clients to old response patterns even when the real rewards have moved on.
01Research in Context
What this study did
College students sat at a computer and pressed a button.
A light told them when fast presses paid off and when slow ones did.
Before each round the experimenter gave a short rule like “press fast” or “press slow.”
The real money schedule sometimes matched the rule and sometimes did not.
What they found
People stuck to the rule even when it cost them money.
Once the rule locked in, many never checked the real payoff again.
Mixed rules (“fast then slow”) were easier to drop when the payoffs changed.
How this fits with other research
Prasher et al. (1995) later showed the same lock-in happens with staff.
They followed rules about ignoring self-injury even when the simulation paid them to respond.
Robertson et al. (2013) added a small penalty for rule-breaking and still saw the pattern.
Adults kept obeying wrong instructions longer, though strong cash finally pulled some away.
Together these studies say: once people hear a rule, the rule—not the payoff—often drives the behavior.
Why it matters
Your instructions are powerful.
If you tell a learner “stay seated for five minutes” and later the rewards change, the child may still sit for five even when shorter sits now pay off.
Check your own rules too—are you prompting staff to ignore attention-seeking that you now want to reinforce?
Test the actual contingencies often and rewrite outdated rules before they cost you progress.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Humans were presented with a task that required moving a light through a matrix. Button presses could produce light movements according to a multiple fixed-ratio 18/differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate 6-s schedule, with components alternating every 2 min. Moving the light through the maze earned points worth chances on money prizes. In Experiment 1 four conditions were assessed through between-subject comparisons: minimal instructions, instructions to press rapidly, instructions to press slowly, and instructions that sometimes rapid responding would work while at other times a slow rate would work best. Subjects responded in three successive sessions of 32 min each. The results suggested that instructions affected the nature of the contact made with the programmed consequences and thus subsequent performance. In some cases, responding seemed to result from added contingencies introduced by stating rules. In Experiment 2 the relative contribution of these two effects was assessed by presenting and then withdrawing two lights that had been paired with two specific instructions: "Go Fast" or "Go Slow." There were three conditions. In one condition, only the Go Fast light was on; in a second, only the Go Slow light was on; and in a third, the lights alternated each minute. In each condition, half the subjects had all instruction lights turned off after the first session. The results once again showed an effect of instructions on contact with the programmed consequences. However, responding sometimes continued in a manner consistent with added contingencies for rule-following even when the programmed consequences had been contacted and would have controlled a different type of responding in the absence of instructions. The relevance of added contingencies for rule-following in determining the effects of explicitly programmed consequences is emphasized.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1986 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1986.45-237