Assessment of the "time-urgency" behavioral style: performance under DRL schedules of reinforcement

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between "time-urgency" via the guide of Personality Factors (Fernandez, 1987) and performance in an operant schedule that reinforces responding with minimal pauses. Fifteen university students participed in the study. In the first experiment a DRL 10" was used for 5 men and 2 women, in the second experiment a DRL 20" was used for training 4 women and 4 men. At the end of training a contingency description questionnaire was administered to all participants. Results showed that the probability to describe correctly current contingencies is related to the index of operant eficiency during training; differences associated to the gender in the psychometric data and also during the first sessions of the DRL 20" performance were recorded which disappeared later on. Significant relations were found between "urgency" and temporal underestimation under the FRL 20" but not under the DRL 10" schudule. The use of operant methodology is proposed for future studies of individual differences associated to health problems