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. 1988 Summer;21(2):123–141. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1988.21-123

Behavioral momentum in the treatment of noncompliance.

F C Mace 1, M L Hock 1, J S Lalli 1, B J West 1, P Belfiore 1, E Pinter 1, D K Brown 1
PMCID: PMC1286105  PMID: 2971034

Abstract

Behavioral momentum refers to the tendency for behavior to persist following a change in environmental conditions. The greater the rate of reinforcement, the greater the behavioral momentum. The intervention for noncompliance consisted of issuing a sequence of commands with which the subject was very likely to comply (i.e., high-probability commands) immediately prior to issuing a low-probability command. In each of five experiments, the high-probability command sequence resulted in a "momentum" of compliant responding that persisted when a low-probability request was issued. Results showed the antecedent high-probability command sequence increased compliance and decreased compliance latency and task duration. "Momentum-like" effects were shown to be distinct from experimenter attention and to depend on the contiguity between the high-probability command sequence and the low-probability command.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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