Effects of instructions and descriptions with and without criterion on the acquisition and transfer of a second-order conditional discrimination

Abstract

Three experiments were done to evaluate the effects of instructions and performance descriptions, with and without solution criterion, on the facilitation of contingency-substitution interactions. Thirty two college students, of both sexes, volunteered to participate, and were randomly distributed in eight groups, six experimental and two for control. The experimental task consisted of a second-order matching-tosample situation. Experiment 1 evaluated the effect of training in a first block with instructions specifying the criterion (Group 1) or the correct response (Group 2) on the performance of intra-modal, extra-modal, extra-relational, and extra-dimensional transfer tests, as well as on the acquisition of a new task under instrumental non-corrective training and the same type of transfer tests in a second block. Experiment 2 evaluated the effect of choosing descriptions specifying the criterion (Group 5) or the response (Group 6) during the fist block training on the same tests and second training as in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 evaluated the joint effect of instructions plus descriptions specifying the criterion (Group 7) or the response (Group 8) during training, as in the first two experiments. Two control groups were used: one, was exposed to a non-corrective instrumental training (Group 3), and another to a corrective instrumental training (Group 4). Results showed that Groups 1, 4, and 6 performed better on transfer tests and on the second block. These findings are discussed in terms of the discriminative and linguistic interactionspromoted by the procedures being employed.