The Effects of Continuous Reinforcement History on Rule-Following Behavior

Abstract

The aim of this study, carried out with 16 university students, was to investigate the effects of continuous reinforcement history on rule-following behavior. Under a matching-to-sample procedure, with three comparison stimuli, the participants were asked to point the three comparisons in a sequence, according to its dimension common to the sample. Each rule specified the response sequence. Contingency-discrepant rule following was not reinforced, whereas correspondent rule following was reinforced on a CRF schedule. Two experiments were conducted in which the rules were presented in one of two sequences: correspondent-discrepant or discrepant-cprrespondent-discrepant. In contrast to Experiment 1, the participants in Experiment 2 abandoned discrepant rule following and responded in accordance with their prior reinforcement history. These findings have implications for the identification of the variables involved in rule-following behavior.