Le Conditionnement Instrumental d’Ordre Supérieur dans la Théorie de l’Apprentissage d’Arthur W. Staats

Abstract

Staats (1964) stated a principle of higher-order instrumental conditioning: if a neutral stimulus was presented in conjunction with a directing stimulus which secures the control of an instrumental response, it in turn becomes a directive stimulus for this response. The principle is subjected to experimental verification. The subjects are 48 mentally handicapped children (I.Q. of 25-55) of both sexes, aged 6 to 18, who attended a special public school. The stimuli right and left integrated with the commands: “show your right hand,” “show your left hand,” have a low or nil directive value; the stimuli to eat and the other hand, integrated with the commands: “show your hand in order to eat,” “show the other hand,” have a higher directive value. The treatment of the experimental group involved the presentation of the stimuli along with the commands: “show your right hand to eat,” “show your left hand, the other hand,” if the subject is right-handed and the opposite if he is left-handed. The results indicate significant differences in the directive value of the right and left stimuli between the pretest and the posttest of the experimental group and between the control group and the experimental group on the posttest with a probability of less than 0.0000005. These results tend to validate the principle of higher-order instrumental conditioning.