Rule-Governed Behavior

Description

Rule-governed behavior is behavior that is under the stimulus control of a verbal (not necessarily oral) stimulus. Straightforward examples include a child responding to the request of a parent, a cook following a recipe to bake a cake, a student choosing an answer on a multiple-choice mathematics test after calculating the answer, and a driver slowing in response to a traffic sign about construction ahead. In all these instances, individuals respond to a verbal statement that they or someone else have formulated. These responses occur because of a history of reinforcement for similar responses to such verbal formulations.

Rule-governed behavior is considered operant behavior, subject to the same three-term contingency analysis as other operant behavior, except that the antecedent is verbal. Thus, rule following develops as children are reinforced for behavior that is consistent with instructions and requests. The most rudimentary rule following may involve attending to an object when it is named by another (e.g., “See the doggie!”).

Three types of rule-governed response have been distinguished on the basis of the types of consequences that are associated with maintained or increased responding. Pliance, which is derived from the word compliance, is rule-governed behavior in which the consequences for responding are provided by another person. A child begins to pick up things around his desk when asked by the teacher because on prior occasions, he has been reinforced by teachers for doing so or punished for not doing so. Pliance appears to be the first type of rule-governed behavior to be established. As a result of a long history of consequences from others for behavior consistent with verbal prompts, instructions, requests, commands, and so on, humans have a generalized tendency to comply with such verbal stimuli.

Tracking is rule-governed behavior that is under the control of the apparent correspondence between the rule and the way the world is arranged. A student is given directions to a new classroom and follows them, not because the direction giver is likely to reinforce the response but because in times past the student has been reinforced for following similar directions by arriving at the desired classroom. Relatively unambiguous examples of tracking would include using a manual to fix a car, preparing a cucumber dill sauce according to a recipe, and completing a complex set of equations to arrive at a prediction of economic growth.

Tracking and pliance are not completely distinct processes, however. A rule may be followed both because others will reinforce one for doing so and because, by following the rule, the person achieves some consequence in the world. Educational instruction has both qualities. A math student may use procedures she has been taught to solve equations both because her behavior will achieve a correct solution (tracking) and because the teacher will approve of her doing so (pliance). In general, pliance appears to develop before tracking. Humans first learn to follow rules because others reinforce such behavior, but many of the rules they come to follow produce consequences that are reinforcing in and of themselves.

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