Effects of Monitoring and Social Reprimands on Instruction-Following in Undergraduate Students

The effects of the magnitude of nonverbal consequences, monitoring, and social consequences on instruction-following were evaluated. Twenty-four undergraduates were exposed to a matching-to-sample procedure. The undergraduates underwent four experimental phases that differed regarding the presence or absence of the observer and the correspondence or non-correspondence of the instructions with the nonverbal contingency. In Experiments 1 and 2, the magnitudes of the nonverbal consequences were manipulated, and in Experiment 3, the effects of verbal reprimands on instruction-following were evaluated. The results revealed that alterations in the magnitudes of nonverbal consequences did not influenced the performances of the participants and that monitoring increased the probability that the participants would follow the instructions but not to an extent sufficient to maintain performance when the consequences did not correspond to the nonverbal contingency. The inclusion of verbal reprimands was necessary to achieve this effect. These results support the proposition that social control is important for maintaining instruction-following.