The Effects of Instructions on DRL Performance in Humans

Abstract

In a Sidman-avoidance procedure, Galizio (1979) investigated the nature of instruction-following behavior of human subjects as rule-governed behavior. The present study, in contrast to Galizio's experiment, used a schedule of positive reinforcement (three-component multiple DRL schedule of reinforcement) as experimental settings and investigated the effects of accurate or inaccurate instructions (Experiment I, II) and also examined whether instruction-following behavior comes under the external discriminative stimulus or not (Experiment III). In Experiment I and Experiment II, subjects followed instructions as far as the instructions were accurate, but didn't always followed the instructions when they were inaccurate. Especially, in the case following instructions resulted in the aversive consequences, subjects responded according to ongoing schedule of reinforcement not to instructions. Experiment III demonstrated that added novel stimulus controlled instruction-following behavior. Consistent with Galizio's findings, these results support Skinner's view of rule-governed behavior.