Semester
Spring
Date of Graduation
2003
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Type
PhD
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department
Psychology
Committee Chair
Philip N. Chase.
Abstract
The current experiments examined the relation between resurgence and the sensitivity of instructed behavior to contingency changes. Although previous investigations have examined resurgence with directly reinforced responses, no studies had examined situations where the responses that recurred during extinction belonged to the class of rule-governed behavior and where the specific responses had not been reinforced directly within the experiment. To address this issue, the current experiments examined the effect of a history of instructing responding at different rates without directly reinforcing these specific rates. Both resurgence and sensitivity to environmental changes were measured to determine whether the instructed responses would recur and whether they would affect the sensitivity of responding to novel contingencies. Instructed behavior resurged and two factors affected the sensitivity of rule-governed behavior to environmental changes: (a) the recurrence of both directly reinforced responses and responses under instructional control, and (b) subjects' history of reinforcement for responding variably.
Recommended Citation
Aguilera, Carolina, "Resurgence of inaccurately instructed behavior" (2003). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 1821.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/1821