Schedule and information effects of feedback on judged dissimilarity of schematic patterns

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine: (1) if Ss respond to schedule effects of feedback, even where this feedback is uncorrelated with the intrinsic information in the patterns being judged; (2) if this effect of feedback increases as the amount of intrinsic information decreases: and (3) if this effect of feedback manifests itself both locally, over short sequences of events, and over longer blocks of trials. All three of these general questions were answered positively, although not without ambiguity or qualification. It was found that the presence or absence of feedback had little effect on judged dissimilarity for Ss judging 70% redundant VARGUS 9 patterns. There was a significant effect of feedback for Ss judging 50% redundant patterns. The mean of the dissimilarity judgments decreased considerably when feedback was provided. There was also evidence that Ss did respond to feedback in local sequences of events. Predictions about the next stimulus were found to be correlated with the proportion of inter-schemata pairs and/or the proportion of feedback indicating "dissimilar" patterns had occurred in blocks of trials ranging in length of from one to ten trials. The present study demonstrated that schedule effects clearly occur and are pervasive. The two types of schedule effects found are manifested in several different behaviors. The long term or large trial block proportion effect appears to affect the threshold an S adopts for labeling stimuli similar or dissimilar. The local sequence effect of feedback may well contribute to relational differences as well as absolute shifts in judgments of stimuli. Effects such as these may interfere with the accuracy of judgments since on a trial-to-trial basis, a stimulus pair is, for all practical purposes, independent of the stimulus pair preceding it. An S attending to local probabilities may well be attending to irrelevant information. That the schedule effects of feedback are found to increase as intrinsic stimulus information decreases has potentially serious repercussions for much of the research on feedback in areas such as concept formation.