Efeitos da complexidade da tarefa sobre intervalos de tempo na variabilidade comportamental: possíveis inferências de eventos privados

Abstract

In Radical Behaviorism, one of the basal questions is how to explain and clarify about private events, which are responses inaccessible to others, except the subject who exhibits them. This school of thought argues that private verbal behavior can be rigorously analyzed, like any other aspect in the study of verbal behavior, reflecting its commitment to a precise scientific methodology to understand all aspects of verbal behavior, both public and private. Contrary to previous ideas, an objective psychology should not replace private events with verbal reports, from which they are inferred. Verbal description is a response of the organism and should be analyzed independently, as a behavior influenced by specific events. Therefore, it is essential to analyze beyond the content of the report, exploring the relationship between the verbal report and quantitative data, such as time intervals and task performance, to infer the occurrence of private behavioral processes more accurately. With the goal to understand the relationship between observable and private events in complex behavioral processes, this study was conducted to evaluate the effects of task complexity, imposed by the Lag n reinforcement schedules, on participants performance, systematics, and intervals between responses. Furthermore, to verify the possible relationship between observable response patterns and the occurrence of private events. The experiment involved the participation of 40 university students, divided into five groups with different Lag n schedule values (G5, G10, G25, G50, and G70). The activity consisted of emitting sequences of nine touches on a 5x5 matrix on computer software. The touch sequences generated points or indicated errors, depending on the fulfillment of the criteria of the Lag schedules in force. Measures of variability and performance, such as the percentage of sequences that met variability criteria (MetVar), the number of sequences emitted, and the U Index of uncertainty, were used. In addiction of autocorrelation analyses, to verify the systematic/ randomness of the responses, time intervals, which were also recorded and analyzed, and participants' reports, which were collected at the end of the activity, seeking to verify the correspondence between verbal and non-verbal behavior. From the results, it was observed that more complex schedules (larger Lag n) led to greater variability of responses (measured by the U Index) and to poorer performance on tasks (MetVar). Additionally, significant differences in response patterns and intervals between responses were observed, demonstrating the effect of task complexity on the strategies adopted by participants. Verbal reports from participants about their perceptions of changes in response times provided additional data on how temporal variables relate to task execution and self-rule formulation (strategies). The results reinforce the importance of integrated analytical approaches, combining quantitative and qualitative methods, for a deeper understanding of behavioral phenomena, especially in contexts that explore behavioral variability and problem-solving in humans with steady-state verbal behavior. This study contributes to the existing literature, aligning with previous research highlighting the relevance of behavioral variability in learning and problem-solving, paving the way for future investigations on the importance of considering the role of precursors (public or private) in problemsolving