| Sumario: | In an early experiment, Greenspoon (1955) confirmed that adult human verbal behavior may come under the control of subtle differential reinforcement contingencies. Later, Truax (1966) demonstrated that differential reinforcement played a role in therapist-patient interactions during “non-directive” (Rogerian) therapy. In a laboratory context. Catania, Matthews, and Shimoff (1982) found that selectively reinforcing rules in opposition to contingencies resulted in participants performing at rates that minimized acquisition of moment-by-moment monetary reinforcement. Ninness, Shore, and Ninness (1999) suggested that differential reinforcement of rule selections is a powerful procedure during human-computer interactions. In this study, we explored the possibility that similar procedures might be obtained using voice-interactive software. During baseline, 4 subjects made voice selections of items displayed on the screen and were exposed to “chimes” as a form of auditory feedback when making selections. In the first differential reinforcement condition, subjects were asked to make voice selections of these same items and participants received brief, positively inflected, comments from the computer (e.g., “mmm-hmmm,” “okay,” “yes”) when making particular types of verbal selections. Selection of other items resulted in similar comments from the computer; however, these comments were devoid of “positive” inflection. In the final session, contingencies were reversed, and differential response rates regressed toward baseline levels. Results suggest that verbal selections of particular items come under the influence of positively inflected, computer-generated, differential reinforcement procedures. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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