Uninstructed human responding: sensitivity to ratio and interval contingencies

Abstract

College students' presses on a telegraph key were occasionally reinforced by light onsets in the presence of which button presses (consummatory responses) produced points later exchangeable for money. One student's key presses were reinforced according to a variable-ratio schedule; key presses of another student in a separate room were reinforced according to a variable-interval schedule yoked to the interreinforcement intervals produced by the first student. Instructions described the operation of the reinforcement button, but did not mention the telegraph key; instead, key pressing was established by shaping. Performances were comparable to those of infrahuman organisms: variable-ratio key-pressing rates were higher than yoked variable-interval rates. With some yoked pairs, schedule effects occurred so rapidly that rate reversals produced by schedule reversals were demonstrable within one session. But sensitivity to these contingencies was not reliably obtained with other pairs for whom an experimenter demonstrated key pressing or for whom the reinforcer included automatic point deliveries instead of points produced by button presses. A second experiment with uninstructed responding demonstrated sensitivity to fixed-interval contingencies. These findings clarify prior failures to demonstrate human sensitivity to schedule contingencies: human responding is maximally sensitive to these contingencies when instructions are minimized and the reinforcer requires a consummatory response.