Response Expectancy

Author(s):  
Irving Kirsch
Keyword(s):  
1963 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 787-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucian Cordaro ◽  
James R. Ison

Three groups of undergraduate volunteers were given differential expectancies about S's behavior prior to their observations of planaria undergoing conditioning. Group HE ( n = 5) received a high response expectancy, Group LE ( n = 5) a low response expectancy, and Group HLE observed one planarian under each expectancy condition. Group HE reported 18% contractions and 49% head turns in 100 trials whereas Group LE reported but 9% and 9.9%. Group HLE reported 15.4% contractions and 30% head turns under high expectancy instructions, but only 4.8% and 15.4% under low expectancy instructions. Analyses of the effect of instructions between Groups HE and LE and within Group HLE both yielded significant F ratios ( P < .001). Although it is unwise to generalize from naive volunteers to sophisticated investigators, it is clear that response recording in planaria should be made less ambiguous, perhaps by taking photographic records.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Thomaschke ◽  
Joachim Hoffmann ◽  
Carola Haering ◽  
Andrea Kiesel

When a particular target stimulus appears more frequently after a certain interval than after another one, participants adapt to such regularity, as evidenced by faster responses to frequent interval-target combinations than to infrequent ones. This phenomenon is known as time-based expectancy. Previous research has suggested that time-based expectancy is primarily motor-based, in the sense that participants learn to prepare a particular response after a specific interval. Perceptual time-based expectancy — in the sense of learning to perceive a certain stimulus after specific interval — has previously not been observed. We conducted a Two-Alternative-Forced-Choice experiment with four stimuli differing in shape and orientation. A subset of the stimuli was frequently paired with a certain interval, while the other subset was uncorrelated with interval. We varied the response relevance of the interval-correlated stimuli, and investigated under which conditions time-based expectancy transfers from trials with interval-correlated stimuli to trials with interval-uncorrelated stimuli. Transfer was observed only where transfer of perceptual expectancy and transfer of response expectancy predicted the same behavioral pattern, not when they predicted opposite patterns. The results indicate that participants formed time-based expectancy for stimuli as well as for responses. However, alternative interpretations are also discussed.


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