Resumo

VEIGA, Dhayana Inthamoussu; SCHMIDT, Andréia  e  BISCOUTO, Kátia Daniele. An analysis of instructions functions in a free operant procedure with children. Acta comport. [online]. 2012, vol.20, n.1, pp.45-69. ISSN 0188-8145.

In spite of the wider conceptual discussion among behavior analysts about instructions functions, very few empirical studies have been conducted to support it. And even less empirical studies have been conducted by using free-operant procedure with children. The present study was conducted to verify if the correspondence or non-correspondence of instructions related to reinforcement conditions in a free-operant procedure could alter these instructions' function over the children's responding during a game-format task. Ten children from 8 to 10 years old, divided in two groups, participated in Experiment 1. All children participated individually in a game in which they had to search for written clues that led them (or not) to new clues until a gift voucher was founded. Participants of the first group were predominantly exposed to clues that described places where new clues were hidden (correspondent instructions) while the second group's participants were predominantly exposed to clues which described places where there were no clues (non-correspondent instructions). In both groups, instructions seemed to produce function-altering rather than discriminative or motivating effects. Experiment 2 was conducted to refine experimental control of Experiment 1. Eight children with 8 to 10 years old, divided in two groups, participated in Experiment 2. Procedure was the same as in Experiment 1, except for changes in the clues' searching places. Similar results were obtained in Experiment 2 in which the function-altering effects were produced by instructions in spite of their correspondence or non correspondence to reinforcement conditions (i.e. children responded under control of instructions during all the procedure). A free-operant procedure was used instead of a discrete-trial one, allowing the participants to emit a wider range of responses in the experimental setting. The characteristic of this procedure seems to be more appropriate to investigate the effects produced by instructions over human responding (especially children's) in a broader way. In both experiments, participants responded under control of instructions during the task, showing that instructional control was strong in spite of response-alternatives availability. New studies are necessary to develop more sophisticated and controlled free-operant procedures in the instructional control research area.

Palavras-chave : Instructional control; rule-governed behavior; function-altering function; discriminative function; motivating function; free-operant procedure; children.

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