A produção de variabilidade de respostas pelo reforçamento de mudanças na dimensão duração

AUTOR(ES)
FONTE

IBICT - Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

30/03/2002

RESUMO

The environment is constantly changing, so that variability is a feature of behavior of fundamental importance for the behavior of organisms. Selection only exists because the responses of an organism are never identical. The study of variability can contribute with the comprehension of important processes like the emergence of new behavior, complex behavior, problem solving and what is commonly called creativity. The great majority of the studies on variability takes response sequences as the unit of analysis, and that has been raising controversy in the field. The present study tried to avoid these issues investigating the possible operant control of variability by reinforcing a given response dimension: duration. The purpose of the present study was to investigate if variability and repetition on the duration of a response could be controlled by their consequences and by discriminative stimuli, and if this control could influence the variability levels of the duration of a different response. Lever pressing and nose poking responses of four male water deprived rats were conditioned and differentiated until they reached à duration of six seconds. Subjects were then exposed to variability (lag 3) and repetition contingencies on the duration of one of the two responses. After that, variability and repetition conditions were changed within sessions after ten reinforcements in each condition. Two different tones were presented depending on the condition throughout the experiment. Finally, subjects were exposed to a second manipulandum and the response duration under both conditions was measured. A reversal procedure of the stimulus control conditions was implemented and the subjects were exposed again to the second manipulandum, response duration was measured. Results indicated that variability on the duration of a response is controlled by its consequences and discriminative stimuli and may be an alternative unit of analysis to the study of variability

ASSUNTO(S)

psicologia experimental variabilidade controle de estímulos classe de respostas dimensão operante duração da resposta comportamento humano variability stimulus control response class operant dimension response duration

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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