The effect of incongruent instructions and consequences on imitation in retarded children.
Consequences override instructions—keep your rewards and your words in sync when teaching imitation.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers told children with intellectual disability to either copy or not copy adult actions.
Then they gave praise and tokens for copying, no matter what they had said earlier.
They watched what happened when the rewards later stopped.
What they found
Kids kept copying while the rewards flowed, even when told not to copy.
When rewards ended, copying dropped fast under the no-copy rule.
Under the copy rule, kids still copied a little even without rewards.
How this fits with other research
Peterson et al. (1971) saw the same thing one year earlier. They showed that just having an adult in the room could boost or drop copying in preschoolers.
Vanvuchelen (2016) looked deeper into copying errors in Down syndrome. Her work tells us to watch for wrong actions, not just missed ones.
Roche et al. (1997) proved the rule in pigeons: consequences beat rules every time. The 1972 study shows the same law holds for kids with ID.
Why it matters
Your words and your rewards must match. If you say don’t copy but still pay for copies, the child will copy. When you fade the pay, the child will stop only if your words said stop. Check that your praise, tokens, or high-fives line up with your directions every session.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Three retarded boys served as subjects in a 13-phase experiment. In eight of these phases, the instructions administered by the experimenter before demonstrating a behavior and the consequences for imitative behavior were incongruent (the consequences were not those indicated by the instructions). Consequences rather than instructions controlled imitative behavior when (a) subjects were instructed not to imitate but received reinforcers if they imitated; (b) subjects were instructed to imitate but were differentially reinforced for other behavior; (c) subjects were instructed to imitate but were verbally reprimanded for imitation. Although subjects were highly imitative at the beginning of the study, when there was no reinforcement for imitation subjects gradually stopped imitating when instructed not to imitate. Instructions seemed to control imitative behavior when there was no reinforcement for imitation and subjects were instructed to imitate. These results indicated a need for further investigation of antecedent and consequent variables in imitation experiments and pointed out that certain techniques may be more efficient than others in eliminating well-established responses.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1972 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1972.5-467