Journal article
College students' responding to and rating of contingency relations: The role of temporal contiguity
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, Vol.46(1), pp.15-35
07/1986
DOI: 10.1901/jeab.1986.46-15
PMCID: PMC1348253
PMID: 16812454
Abstract
Two experiments investigated the role of temporal contiguity in college students' responding to and rating of contingency relations during operant conditioning. Schedules were devised that determined\nwhen\nbut not\nwhether\nappetitive or aversive events would occur. Subjects' reports concerning the schedules were obtained by means of a 200-point rating scale, anchored by the phrases “prevents the light from occurring” (−100) and “causes the light to occur” (+100). When tapping a telegraph key advanced the time of point gain, responding was maintained or increased and subjects gave positive ratings. When tapping a telegraph key advanced the time of point loss, subjects also gave positive ratings, but responding now decreased. When key tapping delayed the time of point gain, responding decreased and subjects gave negative ratings. When key tapping delayed the time of point loss, subjects also gave negative ratings, but responding now increased. These findings implicate response-outcome contiguity as an important contributor to causal perception and to reinforcement and punishment effects. Other accounts—such as those stressing the local probabilistic relation between response and outcome or the molar correlation between response rate and outcome rate—were seen to be less preferred interpretations of these and other results.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- College students' responding to and rating of contingency relations: The role of temporal contiguity
- Creators
- Edward A WassermanDanny J Neunaber
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, Vol.46(1), pp.15-35
- DOI
- 10.1901/jeab.1986.46-15
- PMID
- 16812454
- PMCID
- PMC1348253
- ISSN
- 0022-5002
- eISSN
- 1938-3711
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 07/1986
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984070007402771
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