Adult Performance Under the Self-Control Paradigm in a Computerized Videogame

Abstract

Sonuga-Barke, Lea and webley using the self-control operant paradigm proposed (1989) the correspondence of human developmental stages with behavioral tendencies. Their basic thesis is that small children are prone to behave in an impulsive fashion, that they are sensitive to the amount of reinforcers, soon after when they grow up, children'become more sensitive to density of reinforcement and they start to behave self-controlled, until after turn 12 years old when they finally maximize, behaving alternately in an impulsive or self-controlled fashion according with the circumstances. This research contrasts one of the logical consequences of this thesis, by replicating the procedure used by those authors in order to determine whether there is regularity in the tendency to maximize among adults under similar circumstances, or if subjects fall among the four logically possible styles that might come up under the self-control paradigm: 1) impulsive, 2) self-controlled, 3) random, or 4) maximizing. 12 american female college students participated in the study, they passed through 5 choise conditions in a series of 15 minutes sessions (Sonuga-Barke et al 1989a). Following Sonuga-Barke et al, one migh expect that subjects, being adults, were sensitive to the density of reinforcement, showing generalized patterns of maximization, results showed that this was the case in only 58.33% of the cases, 25% of the subjects behave randomly while 16.66% did it impulsively. No one behaved in a self-controlled manner. The use of the self-control paradigm is proposed for the quantification of human individual differences.