Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Two experiments are presented that demonstrate college students' success at detecting response-noncontingent outcomes. Both experiments used free-operant procedures. In Experiment 1, subjects were randomly assigned to either response-contingent or response-noncontingent outcome conditions that produced the same frequency and temporal distribution of outcomes. The procedures differed only in terms of whether responses produced outcomes. Behavioral and verbal judgment data indicated that subjects in the response-noncontingent outcome condition detected the noncontingency. Experiment 2 investigated the outcome frequency variable. Prior experiments have shown that, under certain conditions, higher frequencies of response-noncontingent outcomes produce higher degrees of perceived control over those outcomes; other experiments have failed to find a similar outcome frequency effect. We gave two groups of subjects different frequencies of response-noncontingent outcomes. Results showed that response rates, but not judgments of control, were reliably influenced by this manipulation. We relate these findings to previous free-operant and trial-by-trial studies of noncontingency detection.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allan, L. G. , & Jenkins, H. M. (1980). The judgment of contingency and the nature of the response alternatives. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 34, 1-11.

Allan, L. G. , & Jenkins, H. M. (1983). The effect of representations of binary variables on judgment of influence. Learning and Motivation, 14, 381-405.

Alloy, L. B. , & Abramson, L. Y. (1979). Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: Sadder but wiser? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108, 441-485.

Alloy, L. B. , & Tabachnik, N. (1984). Assessment of covariation by humans and animals: The joint influence of prior expectations and current situational information. Psychological Review, 91, 112-149.

Benassi, V. A. (1975). Effects of concurrent schedules of contingent and noncontingent reinforcement on a single response (Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York). Dissertation Abstracts International, 35, 5657B.

Benassi, V. A. , & Mahler, H. I. M. (in press). Contingency judgments by depressed college students: Sadder but not always wiser. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Bruner, A. , & Revusky, S. H. (1961). Collateral behavior in humans. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 4, 349-350.

Catania, A. C. , & Cutts, D. (1963). Experimental control of superstitious responding in humans. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 6, 203-208.

Herrnstein, R. J. (1966). Superstition: A corollary principle of operant conditioning. In W. K. Honig (Ed.), Operant behavior: Areas of research and application (pp. 33-51). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

10.

Jenkins, H. M. , & Ward, W. C. (1965). Judgment of contingency between responses and outcomes. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 79 (1, Whole No. 594).

11.

Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol. 15). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

12.

Kleinke, C. L. (1982). Operant behavior under a falsely perceived response-reinforcement contingency: An attributional analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 8, 239-241.

13.

Poresky, R. H. (1971). Noncontingency detection in children and adults. Proceedings of the 79th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, 6, 691-692.

14.

Rachlin, H. , & Baum, W. M. (1972). Effects of alternative reinforcement: Does the source matter? Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 18, 231-241.

15.

Schoenfeld, W. N. , Cole, B. K. , Lang, J. , & Mankoff, R. (1973). "Contingency" in behavior theory. In F. J. McGuigan & D. B. Lumsden (Eds.), Contemporary approaches to conditioning and learning (pp. 151-172). Washington, DC: V. H. Winston.

16.

Segal, E. F (1964). A rapid procedure for generating random reinforcement intervals on VI and VR tapes. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 7, 20.

17.

Skinner, B. F. (1948). "Superstition" in the pigeon. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 38, 168-172.

18.

Tennen, H. , Drum, P. E. , Gillen, R. , & Stanton, L. A. (1982). Learned helplessness and the detection of contingency: A direct test. Journal of Personality, 50, 426-442.

19.

Wasserman, E. A. , Chatlosh, D. L. , & Neunaber, D. J. (1983). Perception of causal relations in humans: Factors affecting judgments of response-outcome contingencies under free-operant procedures. Learning and Motivation, 14, 406-432.

Detection of Noncontingency in a Free-Operant Situation

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References