Resumen de Efeito do tempo de exposição na extensão do controle de estímulos

Nathalie Nunes Freire Alves de Medeiros, Jonathan Melo de Oliveira, Elenice Seixas Hanna

• português

  Foi investigado o efeito do tempo de exposição a estímulos compostos em discriminações simples e simultâneas sobre a extensão do controle de estímulos e sobre o padrão de respostas de observação. Foi realizado um delineamento misto, o qual permitiu uma análise intrassujeito e do desempenho de seis estudantes universitários expostos a três condições experimentais, nas quais, para metade dos participantes, o tempo de exposição aos estímulos foi de 1,5 s e, para a outra metade, 3,0 s. Os treinos alternavam tarefas de discriminações simples baseadas em diferenças múltiplas (DM) e de Resposta Diferencial de Observação (DOR). No DOR, o participante deveria emitir duas respostas de discriminação em uma mesma tentativa, sendo a primeira entre estímulos compostos com diferenças críticas entre seus elementos e, a segunda, entre elementos dispostos separadamente. Nos testes, os estímulos foram recombinados e as tentativas alternavam estímulos compostos e elementos isolados. O comportamento de observação dos estímulos foi medido via equipamento de registro ocular. Foi observado que o DOR foi eficaz em reduzir o controle restrito e que a exposição aos estímulos por 1,5 s pode ter favorecido o controle parcial nos treinos em DM, enquanto que, a exposição por 3,0 s produziu desempenhos superiores nos testes.

• English

  Discriminative trainings involving compound stimuli can result in control only by part of elements of the stimuli correlated with reinforcement, which may constitute a stimulus control problem when tasks require control by all relevant elements. This stimulus control problem, called restricted control, is particularly frequent in autistic individuals. However, depending on the specificities of the discriminative training, it is also possible to verify the occurrence of restricted control in undergraduates. The recording of ocular movements in training and tests in discrimination tasks may be a parallel measure of the extent of stimulus control and be correlated with performance in these tasks. The effect of exposure time to compound stimuli on the extent of control of behavior by stimuli and on the pattern of observation responses with six university students was investigated in the present study. Participants were submitted to three experimental conditions with training and tests of simple simultaneous discriminations among four stimuli. For half of the participants, the stimuli were presented for 1.5 s while, for the other half, the stimuli were presented by 3.0 s. The conditions exposition order alternated training of discriminations based on multiple differences (DM) and with Differential Observation Response (DOR). In DM training, the S-stimuli differed from the S+ by the three compound elements. The DOR training contained two stages: The first contained discriminations based on critical differences, which consisted of discriminations between stimuli composed of three elements in which S- differed from S+ by only one element; and the second one consisted of discriminations between stimuli of only one element. In tests, the discriminations were between four stimuli composed of two and three elements with multiple or critical differences and between four stimuli of a single separated element. Patterns of observation responses were measured via ocular recording equipment. Exposure to the stimuli for 3.0 s produced superior performances in the DM Condition tests, while exposure for 1.5 s may have favored partial control in DM training. DOR was effective in reducing restricted control over both durations of exposure to stimuli, which was also reduced by continued exposure to experimental conditions. Exposure time also affected the observation patterns, so S+ and S- were observed more frequently when the stimuli were exposed for 3.0 s. Continued exposure to conditions affected the patterns of observation responses only when the stimuli were presented for 1.5 s, with a decrease in both S+ and S- observation occurrences. The results point to the effect of exposure time on the extent of stimulus control and the patterns of observation responses.