Rule-governed Behavior Research Articles

Timing Behavior and Development: Comments on Some Animal and Human Data

This paper discusses timing behavior as measured by Fixed (FI), Differential Reinforcement of Low rate (DRL) or Differential Reinforcement Response Duration (DRRD) performances, in humans and animals at different develop stages. Infants and rats display similar behavior patterns in FI and childhood on, humans develop species-specific behavior patterns in FI, which differ from those of animal species. However, DRL patterns do follow similar trends in animals and humans. These discrepancies and similarities may by the availability of cognitive and linguistic tools in humans, and the degree od schedule constraint on behavior. Motivation and reinforcer variables as well as to a cross-specific timing mechanism (such as scalar timing) are briefly commented upon. Available data tend to show that humans shift from contingency-shaped or "animal-like" behavior, in infancy, to rule-governed behavior. This transition is progressive and does not seem to erase forms of adaptation to temporal constraints that humans share with other species.

Shaping of rule-governed behaviour.

Over an experimental session of 80 trials, subjects counted brief auditory stimuli ("clicks") in stimulus presentation periods and indicated the number counted by pressing a key the corresponding number of times in subsequent response periods. "Correct" answers resulted in feedback. Unknown to the subjects, the feedback criterion was based on speed of pressing rather than on the correct number of presses. Speed of pressing was modified by response consequences when feedback was made dependent on pressing faster or slower than baseline speed. Modification of speed occurred independently of rules and without the subjects' ability to describe contingency or response requirements. The results suggest that non-verbal contingencies may have a shaping effect on non-salient and non-described attributes of rule-governed behaviour, and it is argued that this may be an important control mechanism of low-level behavioural attributes that are unlikely to be guided by verbal discriminative stimuli.

On rules and rule-governed behavior: A reply to Catania’s reply

On rules and rule-governed behavior: A reply to Catania’s reply

Imperfect Choice and Self-Stabilizing Rules

A recent paper by David Levy (1987) focuses on “utility enhancing consumption constraints.” Levy concludes by noting that his analysis stays within standard utility maximizing theory, in contrast to my analysis of rule-governed behavior (Heiner, 1983, 1985a, 1985b, 1986, 1988a, 1988b, 1988c) which allows imperfect decisions that don't always maximize utility. I wish to show how our two theories can be integrated, thereby representing complementary, rather than conflicting, explanations. In the process, I argue that imperfect decisions are an essential factor in the stability of any rule that constrains freedom of choice. I also briefly discuss certain intrinsic problems with achieving “self-stabilizing” rules applied to moral teachings.

DISCRIMINATION THEORY OF RULE‐GOVERNED BEHAVIOR

In rule-governed behavior, previously established elementary discriminations are combined in complex instructions and thus result in complex behavior. Discriminative combining and recombining of responses produce behavior with characteristics differing from those of behavior that is established through the effects of its direct consequences. For example, responding in instructed discrimination may be occasioned by discriminative stimuli that are temporally and situationally removed from the circumstances under which the discrimination is instructed. The present account illustrates properties of rule-governed behavior with examples from research in instructional control and imitation learning. Units of instructed behavior, circumstances controlling compliance with instructions, and rule-governed problem solving are considered.

Classical conditioning: The new hegemony

AbstractConverging data from different disciplines are showing the role of classical conditioning processes in the elaboration of human and animal behavior to be larger than previously supposed. Restricted views of classically conditioned responses as merely secretory, reflexive, or emotional are giving way to a broader conception that includes problem-solving, and other rule-governed behavior thought to be the exclusive province of either operant conditiońing or cognitive psychology. These new views have been accompanied by changes in the way conditioning is conducted and evaluated. Data from a number of seemingly unrelated phenomena such as relapse to drug abuse by postaddicts, the placebo effect, and the immune response appear to involve classical conditioning processes. Classical conditioning, moreover, has been found to occur in simpler and simpler organisms and recently even demonstrated in brain slices and in utero. This target article will integrate the several research areas that have used the classical conditioning process as an explanatory model; it will challenge teleological interpretations of the classically conditioned CR and offer some basic principles for testing conditioning in diverse areas.

Promoting safety belt use with traffic signs and prompters.

Two studies were conducted examining the stimulus-control effects of conventional traffic signs as prompts for motor vehicle driver safety belt use. Following pilot research which suggested that a traffic sign reading "Fasten Safety Belt" posted at a parking lot exit was effective in producing small increases in safety belt use, Study I demonstrated the superiority of having human prompters display such signs compared to simply posting the signs. Study II replicated the findings of Study I and found that posted signs became more effective in prompting safety belt use if simple posting was preceded by a period involving human prompters who displayed the signs. The results bear upon the development of more effective use of traffic signs in promoting safety belt use and in viewing such use as an instance of rule-governed behavior.

Start with 418 Therapies (APA Commission, 1984)

Start with 418 Therapies (APA Commission, 1984) The Structure of Individual Psychotherapy. B. D. Beitman. New York: Guilford Press, 1987. (330 pp.) For those of us who have learned to gag at the term "eclectic," viewing it as meaning typically, "I have no theories/don't know or care what my theories are/am hiding my theories since I don't yet know what your theories are" (among job applicants), Bernard D. Beitman's scholarly text, "The Structure of Individual Psychotherapy," is a partial course of desensitization which makes the term more palatable, at least as he uses it. Associate professor of psychiatry at University of Missouri and trained in analytically oriented therapy, Beitman has become a leading light in the eclectic integrative therapy movement, and it is easy to see why. His book is enormously wide-ranging, often witty, engagingly (though wordily) written as the interior monologue of a seeker after truth in a manner pleasantly reminiscent of Freud, and chock-full of engrossing clinical material. Many of the case examples are fascinating, even riveting, representing the kinds of patients and reactions this reviewer does not get, but they all have the ring of authenticity. (OK, so we do not have to look far in figuring out why no one of the 4,000 or so clients I have seen has approached me sexually, but why can't I have had even one elective mute?!) Beitman instructively discusses these psychodynamic-type patients (for want of a better term), some of whom move into the therapist's neighborhood, perhaps making a bomb threat against the therapist's family here and there, who go psychotic when the therapist leaves town, and who may commit suicide with antidepressants. The nondefensive discussion of treatment failures and stalemates is an important feature of this book, since such material is lacking in most texts. One exception that comes to mind is the recently published, near paean to analytically oriented treatment failure, "Forty-Two Lives in Treatment: A Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy" (Wallerstein, 1986). Sift Contents Beitman begins with the obvious idea that we have plenty of types of therapy already and rapidly proceeds to sift from numerous therapies what he sees as commonly useful. According to his analysis, the structure of individual psychotherapy is made up of stages labeled engagement, pattern search, responsibility awareness, initiation of change, termination, and maintenance of change. Beitman sees good in practically every theory. When late in the book he calls himself". . . an existential-cognitive-behavioral-psychodynamic-systems therapist . . ." (p. 306), no reader will have cause for question. Beitman, whose theory is mammoth, does expectably attack antitheoretical Skinner a time or two, and in the process has gotten radical and methodological behaviorism backwards, but the blows are puny, and the terms "contingency management" and "reinforcement" repeatedly appear in his work. Readings in cognitivebehavior modification might enlarge Beitman's understanding of the shaping of rule-governed behavior (Jaremko, 1986). Beitman believes therapists are in business to influence patients, not just to facilitate, and he is often actively-directively at odds with silent and passive therapy/therapists. He sometimes reframes psychoanalytic interpretations in startling ways. For instance, "The presentation of evidence [by the psychoanalyst] for ongoing incestuous feelings serves to shame the patient into change" (p. 211, bracketed material added). In an example of being kind to be cruel, the usually benign Beitman decides to let passive therapists keep their delusions: The carefully placed reinforcers of accurate empathic statements, of certain nods or voice changes can produce responses without clear patient objection and rejection. If the therapist is unaware of the direct intent of these techniques, he or she does not have to feel guilty for "manipulating" the patient. …

A Developmental Analysis of Rule-Following

The development of rule-governed behavior begins when a class of verbal forms called instructions, in conjunction with other variables, systematically occasion functional consequences for compliance (or noncompliance). These instructional forms then function as specific stimulus controls for compliance, with the other variables potentially taking on conjoint or conditional stimulus control of that compliance. Experience with numerous instructions occasioning functional consequences for compliance can establish generalized compliance to an indefinitely large stimulus class of instructions, a stimulus class that readily and naturally includes those forms that describe relationships between events and response to them that we also call rules. The important conjoint variables may well be the instruction giver (rule stater), any of their other systematic characteristics that have occasioned functional consequences for compliance in the past, and the topography of the response requested. Generalization of compliance across people, settings, and topography can occur; this generalization can extend to self-instruction, and can fail to extend to certain topographies ("Thou shalt not kill"), certain rule staters (nonpeers who say "Don't use drugs" when peers say it is fun), and certain settings ("Don't play with John in class"). Finally, children's experiences with describing behavior can lead to new self-instructions that fit the already established discriminative-stimulus class of rules and instructions for compliance, so that the novel self-instruction produces compliance. Compliance-oriented research has demonstrated how instruction givers can establish instructions as a discriminative-stimulus class for compliance, and how generalized compliance to new instructions and new instruction givers can be accomplished. Correspondence-training research has demonstrated that self-instructions can become discriminative for later performance of the described behaviors. Self-instruction research suggests that these forms of instructions also can control subsequent behavior, and that instructions and rules may be produced covertly as well as overtly. What has yet to be demonstrated is an ability to produce a novel self-instruction that controls subsequent behavior. The argument has been that the development of a behavior class, compliance to instructions, could provide a reasonable explanation for the acquisition of rule-governed behavior. Experiences within the natural environment, as well as research on compliance, correspondence, and self-instruction, suggest that a behavior class, compliance to instructions, could provide a reasonable model of the acquisition and ge

Rule-Governed Behavior and Behavioral Anthropology

According to cultural materialism, cultural practices result from the materialistic outcomes of those practices, not from sociobiological, mentalistic, or mystical predispositions (e.g., Hindus worship cows because, in the long run, that worship results in more food, not less food). However, according to behavior analysis, such materialistic outcomes do not reinforce or punish the cultural practices, because such outcomes are too delayed, too improbable, or individually too small to directly reinforce or punish the cultural practices (e.g., the food increase is too delayed to reinforce the cow worship). Therefore, the molar, materialistic contingencies need the support of molecular, behavioral contingencies. And according to the present theory of rule-governed behavior, the statement of rules describing those molar, materialistic contingencies can establish the needed molecular contingencies. Given the proper behavioral history, such rule statements combine with noncompliance to produce a learned aversive condition (often labeled fear, anxiety, or guilt). The termination of this aversive condition reinforces compliance, just as its presentation punishes noncompliance (e.g., the termination of guilt reinforces the tending to a sick cow). In addition, supernatural rules often supplement these materialistic rules. Furthermore, the production of both materialistic and supernatural rules needs cultural designers who understand the molar, materialistic contingencies.

Correspondence training: an example of rule-governed behavior?

Two groups of six mentally retarded adults were exposed to either a "say/do" correspondence training program or a "do only" reinforcement procedure to evaluate the suggestion of Rogers-Warren and Baer (1976) that reinforcement of the nonverbal target behavior in the absence of the relevant verbal behavior may account for the behavior changes seen in correspondence training. The participants worked in an experimental setting on a variety of manipulatory responses leading to various auditory and visual consequences. Analysis of individual patterns of responding indicated no apparent differences between the groups during training; four individuals in each group appeared to develop generalized correspondence skills. We conclude that the outcome of correspondence training may not necessarily be verbal regulation of behavior as is assumed. Rather, we suggest that the notion of rule-governed behavior can best account for the type of behavior changes seen in correspondence studies.

Function-Altering Effects of Contingency-Specifying Stimuli

Contingengy-specifying stimuli (CSSs) can function differently than discriminative stimuli. Rather than evoking behavior due to a history of discrimination training, they alter the function of other stimuli and, therefore, the behavioral relations involving those stimuli. CSSs can alter the evocative function of discriminative stimuli, establishing operations, and conditional stimuli, as well as the efficacy of reinforcing and punishing stimuli and of stimuli that can function in second-order respondent conditioning. The concept of function-altering CSSs has implications for such areas of interest as stimulus equivalence, the terminology involving "rules" and "rule-governed behavior," and the way in which behavior analysts view the effects of such basic processes as reinforcement and punishment.

Rule-following and human operant responding: Conceptual and methodological considerations

A conceptual analysis of rule-governed behavior, emphasizing pliance and tracking as functional classes of rule-following, is provided and related to previous methodological strategies in human operant research. A novel strategy, which utilizes a microcomputer to reinforce correspondences between subject guesses and responding, is proposed for the study of rule-following. Results from a preliminary demonstration of the procedures are reported briefly, and possible applications to the further analysis of rule-following are discussed.

The Experimental Analysis of Human Behavior: History, Current Status, and Future Directions

These papers were presented at a symposium held at the 93rd annual convention of the American Psychological Association, August, 1985, Los Angeles, CA. The papers, in order, address the following topics: the history of operant research with human subjects with particular attention to the type and quantity of research conducted since the mid-1950s; interpretation versus experimentation in the experimental analysis of human behavior (EAHB) with particular emphasis on rule-governed behavior; the historical and current roles of children as subjects in operant research; the relation between basic laboratory research with humans and applied behavior analysis; and the need for future research concentrating on complex human behavior. Each of these papers is discussed in the final section of the proceedings.

A Phonological Analysis Classification for Use with Traditional Articulation Tests

Many clinicians continue to use traditional articulatory assessment procedures even though these tests do not consider phonology, even amongst the disordered population, to be rule-governed behavior requiring understanding through contextual analysis. This paper will present a phonological process analysis classification for use with four of the most popular articulation tests in use today. Furthermore, this paper will present a descriptive comparison across these tests to determine the number of opportunities that exist for each pattern to be applied. Having knowledge of the potential for each process to occur may help clinicians decide which of these tests are more likely to provide information leading to a comprehensive picture of phonological processes of the clients they serve.

INSTRUCTIONS, MULTIPLE SCHEDULES, AND EXTINCTION: DISTINGUISHING RULE‐GOVERNED FROM SCHEDULE‐CONTROLLED BEHAVIOR

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.

Comparative Social Research: Issues in Comparability

Methodological debates in the comparative studies field have become polarized. On the one hand, philosophers such as Winch, Quine and Louch have argued for different reasons that scientific method is inappropriate for social science research. Winch (1958) rules out the possibility of cross-cultural comparison, claiming that outside observers are unable to understand the meaning of rule-governed behaviour, which is dependent on the motives, reasons and decisions of participants in a particular society or culture. Quine's 'translational indeterminacy' thesis implies that equivalence of meaning across cultures is impossible. Louch (1969) argues that observer values will inevitably preclude objective scientific investigation, since social science concepts are moral, not scientific, and that generalization is precluded in any case because activity occurs in such varied contexts. On the other hand, it has been maintained that scientific method in comparative research is conditionally possible, given improved accuracy of measurement (Deutsch 1966), testing of the equivalence of meaning (Levison 1974), or moving to an appropriate and lower level of generalization than scientific laws (MacIntyre 1971). Macintyre argues that the research questions should ask what functions institutions serve in the culture, rather than, as Winch suggests, what institutions mean for participants. With such a move from a subjective towards an objective frame of reference, theory-building becomes possible. The views which support scientific method in social science research are persuasive on both philosophical and practical grounds. Those philosophers who argue that comparative research is impossible, have not only produced incomplete evidence and flawed argument, they have failed to notice that the gap between natural and social science is in practice far narrower than in theory: natural science is subject to uncertainty, based on the difficulty of disentangling causal chains and on the variability of observer perceptions, which is quantitatively, but not qualitatively, different from the uncertainty of social science research. Polarization seems endemic in social science methodology: fact vs meaning; structuralism vs phenomenology; quantitative vs qualitative method. Such debates are likely to continue. Therefore,

On the evolution of human syntactic ability. Its pre-adaptive Bases—Motor control and speech

The evolution of the particular, species-specific, neural substrate that underlies human syntactic and phonologic ability may be the result of two stages of pre-adaptation involving automatization for complex goal-directed motor control. The neural mechanisms of the non-human primate brain that evolved to enhance the automatization of orofacial motor control appear to be the homologue of Broca's area in the human brain. These mechanisms may have been preadapted in certain hominids for the evolution of neural mechanisms adapted for automatized speech articulation, matched to the development of the human supralaryngeal vocal tract. Recent data show that the articulatory maneuver that underly the production of human speech appear to be the most complex that human beings master. The selective pressure for the automatization of articulatory activity for speech production on the neural mechanisms of Broca's area in the hominids ancestral to anatomically modern homo sepiens yielded a neural substrate suited to complex rule-governed behavior in the linguistic domains of phonology and syntax. The theory predicts correlations between the speech production and syntactic deficits of chimpanzees, as well as correlations between syntactic deficits and speech production deficits in aphasia, and some instances of deafness. The development of patterned motor activity and syntactic and phonologic ability in human children may also be connected.

A Rule for the Use of the Term, “Rule-Governed Behavior”

A Rule for the Use of the Term, “Rule-Governed Behavior”

Rule-governed behavior in computational psychology

Rule-governed behavior in computational psychology