Transmissões de Práticas Culturais no Laboratório: Efeito da Correspondência do Fazer/Dizer do Participante Confederado

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to: (1) analyze the transmission of an arbitrary task made from a Confederate Participant; (2) see if manipulation of the experimenter’s instructions to the Confederate about his behavior of correlation between “say” and “do” would cause change in the behavior of other members of the group; (3) observe the ideal procedure to decrease the occurrence of strange variables in future studies of cultural practices. 30 participants were divided into 5 groups. Each group had to have 3 people at a time, that’s what characterizes a microssociety, these people were exchanged for new participants from generation to generation. A generation was defined by the possibility of all members present in the group to be in contact with the activity. There was a Confederate Participant in the beginning of each data collection. The Confederate had to transmit the task that had to be accomplished, these task generated points (Consequenciated Task). The other function of the Confederate was to transmit an Arbitrary Task that did not generate points. Both of the tasks (Consequenciated Task and Arbitrary Task) had a different response topography. The groups were divided into 3 conditions. (1) Condition of correspondence of “do” and “say”, the Group 1 and Group 2 were in these conditions, the Confederate had to show/say the same thing he had to do while solving the activity. (2) Condition of no correspondence between “do” and “say”, containing the Group 3 and 4, the Confederate had to transmit the Arbitrary Task and the Consequenciated Task and solve the activity by only using the Consequenciated Task. (3) Condition of withdraw of authority, containing Group 5, the experimenter that collected the data had to leave the room while the Confederate transmitted how the activity had to be done, saying to the members that they had to do the Arbitrary Task and the Consequenciated Task. The Confederate had to solve the activity by only doing the Consequenciated Task. It was observed in the results that the Arbitrary Task was transmitted to all members in all groups throughout all generations. Due to the transmission of the cultural practices and the direct contact with the contingencies, the lasts generations generated more points than the firsts ones. The longest contact with the activity the more quantity of points were made. It was concluded that the manipulations in the correspondence of the Confederate’s behavior caused changes in the behavior of the other members of the group: the behavior varied in other opportunities of solving the activity and continued to transmit the Arbitrary Task. The procedure to decrease strange variables in experiments involving cultural practices is: (1) utilize a microssociety; (2) utilize changes of generations; (3) utilize an activity to be solved; (4) improve the method of reinforcement distribution by using computer or a task that is not time dependent.