Rule governance is critical to human society. However, could rule governance be found in non-human animals? A six year old, female, African white-necked raven (Covrus albicollis) named Shade correctly followed informal verbal commands to retrieve specified objects in the past. This ability was tested using two different methods. Both methods involved the researcher verbally asking the bird to retrieve one object out of two either from the same room or an adjacent room. While initial results were not significantly different than chance, review of trial recordings revealed that it is possible to predict when the bird will retrieve an incorrect object based solely on specific behaviors, termed inattentive or uninterested. Trials marked as inattentive by observers were significantly more likely to be incorrect than correct. This indicates that the bird was capable of retrieving the correct object, but that she also occasionally, intentionally retrieved the incorrect object.

Behavior-analytic accounts of rule-adherence behavior suggest that rule-governance is a general class of functional (i.e., instrumental) behavior maintained by social consequences (Baum, 2005; Malott & Suarez, 2004; Jacobs et al., in prep.). Evolutionary Life-History (LH) theory suggests that LH strategy may underlie variation in rule-adherence behavior. Based on an integration of these two theories, a theoretical structural model of rule-governance was developed and tested. The structure of this model was used to develop follow-up experiments to test particularly salient links in the model. Consistent with theory, the structural model indicated that slow LH strategy directly and indirectly (through increased moral emotions and increased executive functioning) contributed to strength of rule-governance. Two experiments failed to replicate previously demonstrated effects of executive function depletion or moral identity priming (on moral behavioral outcome measures). Further, self-report measures of slow LH strategy, executive functioning, and rule-governance did not predict prosocial (donating) or rule-defiance (cheating) behavior in laboratory tasks. The limitations of relying solely on either self-report or behavioral tasks of unknown external validity are discussed.

There are many situations in which human performances appear insensitive to changing contingencies of reinforcement when compared to nonhuman operant performances. Explanations of these discrepancies have appealed to rule-governance and have provided some evidence that instructions produce these differences by restricting response alternatives as well as functioning as discriminative stimuli for other contingencies. In order to further evaluate these potential functions, a canonical study on rule-governance was systematically replicated. Five undergraduate participants were tasked with earning blocks by pressing a button during LED-signaled, fixed-ratio 7 and differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate 5-s schedules of reinforcement. Phase 1 of the experiment switched between these two schedules, with the schedule alternating every 1 minute. Phase 2 added instructions to "Go Fast" and "Go Slow" to the LEDs and programmed the lit LED to switch 30 seconds into each 1-minute session. Phase 3 removed the instructions from the LEDs and returned to the procedures of phase 1, with only one LED lit during each 1-minute session. Results showed that instructions influence the response rates as well as stimulus control over those rates. Results also showed that all participants ignored instructions conflicting with the reinforceable rate by the end of Phase 2. These findings indicate that instances of insensitivity may result from instructions restricting response alternatives and their stimulus control, as opposed to instructions signaling a second contingency. These findings are discussed in terms of the nature of instructional stimulus control, its relation to the operant unit of analysis, and alternative interpretations of other instances of insensitivity.