Effects of instructional precision and instructional history on contingency change insensibility in human first order matching-to-sample tasks

Abstract

The present study was made with the purpose to assess if the instructional precision; as well as the subjects’ instructional history; affect the performance sensitivity to the change of contingencies; using three types of instruction (i.e. specific; generic and minimal). 20 university students were assigned randomly to one of five experimental groups that were different by: a) the type of received instruction and; b) the maintenance or change of instructions between conditions. A first order matching-to-sample task was used; each subject had to choose one of the comparison stimuli (CoS) that shared a property (i.e. shape; color) with the sample stimulus (SaS). In the first condition; the correct relation during all sessions was similarity (i.e. the CoS that shared only color or form with SaS). In the second condition; during the first half of the trials of each session the correct relation was maintained (i.e. similarity) as in the first condition; whereas in the second half of each session trials the criterion relation (i.e. contingency) was modified without previous warning from similarity to difference (i.e. the CoS that did not share any of the characteristics with the SaS). Results showed similar instrumental performance (i.e. percentage of correct responses) independently of the experimental group; although the insensitivity and adjustment to the contingencial change indexes varied depending on the instructional precision at the moment of the change; as well as its instructional history.