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Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior logoLink to Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
. 1988 May;49(3):383–393. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1988.49-383

The effects of a variety of instructions on human fixed-interval performance

Janet R LeFrancois, Philip N Chase, James H Joyce
PMCID: PMC1338798  PMID: 16812546

Abstract

College students were instructed to press a button for points under a single reinforcement schedule or under a variety of reinforcement schedules. Instructions for a single schedule were either specific or minimal. Instructions on a variety of schedules involved specific instructions on eight different schedules of reinforcement. Subsequent to the varied training, responding under a fixed-interval schedule occurred at a low rate. Both the minimal and specific instruction training led to fixed-interval responding that was similar to the responding exhibited during training. These findings suggest that under certain conditions instructed behavior is sensitive to changes in contingencies.

Keywords: variety of training, instructed behavior, contingency-shaped behavior, response history, efficiency of responding, reinforcement schedules, button press, adult humans

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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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