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Debatendo a noção de metacontingência a partir da revisão e produção de dados experimentais

Toledo, T. F N. de (2015). Debating the metacontingency notion from the review and production of experimental data. Tese de Doutorado, Instituto de Psicologia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo. This work consists of two studies. The first study review the metacontingencies literature in order to analyze the constituent elements in the light of experimental data. The other study, empirical, employed a free-operant-analogous procedure to investigate the effects of manipulating conditional relationship between interlocking behavioral contingencies (IBCs) and environmental changes over the selection and transmission of CCEs and on operant performance in two reinforcement schedules (VI and VR). The results of the conceptual review showed common elements to operant and cultural selection processes: the behavior, as the set of actions of one or several individuals, its products and variables of selection. The results of the experiment showed that the processes of acquisition, extinction and reacquisition of a unit that includes the behavior of three participants, the culturants, are similar to the processes of acquisition, extinction and reacquisition of operants. The interaction between operant and cultural selection depended on the participants’ performances at baseline. Operants and culturants were socially transmitted. The conceptual review and experimental results support the metacontingency notion, both as a theoretical tool and as a procedure for dealing with phenomena on the third level of selection by consequences. Research data give consistency to the concept and it organizes and! systematizes the experimental manipulations.

Os resultados mostraram claramente que a manipulação da metacontingência foi efetiva em controlar um dado padrão de coordenação entre as respostas dos participantes. Para todas as nove tríades, a introdução e suspensão da metacontingência mostraram que a ocorrência das CCEs requeridas, a uma taxa relativamente alta e estável, dependeu da apresentação da consequência cultural contingente. Esses resultados são consistentes com a noção de metacontingência  e fortalecem a ideia de que contingências comportamentais entrelaçadas e produtos agregados podem recorrer em função da apresentação de consequências culturais  Os resultados mostraram ainda que o processo de seleção de uma unidade que engloba os comportamentos de dois ou três participantes (culturante) é semelhante ao processo de seleção de operantes: a curva de aquisição é positivamente acelerada, mas a inclinação é bastante gradual; a curva de extinção é negativamente acelerada, com períodos alternados de altas e baixas taxas de respostas; a reaquisição é frequentemente abrupta, após o primeiro reforçamento (Catania, 1999). Esses dados são semelhantes aos apresentados por Azrin e . No experimento, a liberação do reforço requeria que duas crianças emitissem respostas de forma coordenada, em relação ao comportamento uma da outra. O que foi medido, a resposta chamada "cooperative", envolvia necessariamente as respostas das duas crianças. Embora não tenham empregado qualquer termo novo na interpretação dos resultados, os autores trataram a resposta cooperativa como uma unidade e a distinguiram de respostas individuais. "The rate of a cooperative response change in much the same way as a function of single reinforcements as does an individual response" (Azrin & Lindsley, 1965, p. 102). Essa afirmação evidencia uma clara diferenciação entre o processo de condicionamento operante e um outro processo, em termos daquilo que muda em função da relação com o ambiente. Essas evidências, somadas aos resultados do presente trabalho e aos apresentados pelos diferentes protocolos de pesquisa citados (e.g., Saconato & Andery, 2013;Sampaio et al., 2014;Vasconcelos & Todorov, no prelo;  Embora com procedimentos muito distintos do empregado neste trabalho, outros estudos que planejaram, simultaneamente, contingências operantes e metacontingências de forma não conflitante mostraram que a manipulação da consequência cultural não afetou as escolhas individuais dos participantes de díades, tríades ou tétrades (e.g.,  Uma das principais contribuições do presente estudo foi mostrar, simultaneamente, mudanças momento-a-momento nos processos de seleção operante e cultural. Muitos estudos demonstraram, ao mesmo tempo, os processos de seleção nos níveis comportamental e cultural (e.g., . No presente estudo, com um procedimento no qual as CCEs eram livres para ocorrer, foi possível observar características adicionais dinâmicas envolvendo os processos de seleção e extinção para operantes e culturantes. Com procedimentos de tentativas, por exemplo, a exposição a uma condição de suspensão das consequências culturais (extinção) raramente produz uma curva característica de extinção (ver   We describe a software program that was developed to study cultural selection using a procedure that is analogous to the free operant. The experimental manipulations allow the use of individual behavioral patterns that are produced by classic schedules of reinforcement to be used as a baseline for experimental demands that are related to social behavior. Two to 4 participants can work simultaneously on the experimental task. Responses on a single manipulandum can lead to different consequences for individual behavior and for participants' coordinated, interlocking behaviors. The software is called "Free Culturant" because participants can emit responses at any time, without intervention from the apparatus or experimenter, and it can assess the selection of cultural units that are composed of sets of interlocking behavioral contingencies that generate a common consequence. We present a pilot study and discuss the software's contributions to advancements in cultural evolution research. Keywords: computerized system, cultural selection, free culturant, metacontingency This paper presents a computerized system that was developed to study social behavior (i.e., the behavior of one participant relative to another) and group (or cultural) organization. The basic idea is to use individual behavior patterns that are produced by classic schedules of reinforcement as a baseline for experimental demands that are related to social behavior. All possible experimental arrangements are consistent with the view that behavior and culture evolve through environmental selection mechanisms. To illustrate the research questions that can be addressed using the present system, we explore how the experimental analysis of behavior can account for social behavior and culture  and discuss the possible contributions to multidisciplinary areas of research on cultural evolution (Mesoudi, Whiten, & Laland, 2006;Richerson & Boyd, 2005). We then present the software itself and a pilot study.

Experimental Analysis of Operant Behavior, Social Behavior, and Culture
In biology, since Darwin's time, the evolution of species has been attributed to processes of variation, selection, and inheritance. In psychology, Darwin's ideas influenced , who proposed that behavior can be explained in an analogous manner. According to Skinner, similar processes that account for behavior can be found in three interrelated levels of selection by consequences: phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and cultural (also see Hull, Langman, & Glenn, 2001;Skinner, 1984). From this perspective: Human behavior is the joint product of (i) the contingencies of survival responsible for the natural selection of the species and (ii) the contingencies of reinforcement responsible for the repertoires acquired by its members, including (iii) the special contingencies maintained by an evolved cultural environment. (Ultimately, of course, it is all a matter of natural selection, since operant conditioning is an evolved process, of which cultural practices are special applications.). (Skinner, 1981, p. 502) The contingencies of reinforcement that are responsible for operant (or instrumental) behavior repertoires can be programmed in the laboratory by arranging consequences for behavior in certain contexts. Increases in the frequency of behavior indicate that consequences act as reinforcements, or, in other words, that consequences select behavior. Operants are the units that are created and maintained by this selection process (reinforcement).
Interest in the study of operant behavior has increased since the demonstration of character-istic patterns of behavior that are generated by basic schedules of reinforcement . Schedules of reinforcement are arrangements that specify which responses within a response class (e.g., a button press) will be reinforced. The most basic schedules of reinforcement are: (a) those that allow a response to be reinforced after some number of responses (ratio schedules), and (b) those that allow a response to be reinforced after an elapsed time since a previous event (interval schedules). Additionally, a given schedule can be fixed, or it can vary according to a plan. These possibilities yield four basic schedules: fixed-interval (FI), variable-interval (VI), fixed-ratio (FR), and variable-ratio (VR).
Investigations of schedules of reinforcement have provided support for the general notion that behavior is selected by consequences, an important step in the experimental analysis of operant behavior. Especially important to the area was the discovery that different basic schedules produce different behavior patterns that can be evaluated by cumulative frequencies of operant responses. FR schedules typically produce a break-and-run pattern. FI schedules produce scalloping. VR schedules produce high rates of responding without stops. VI schedules produce moderate stable rates of responding. Ultimately, this knowledge culminated in analyses that are used to understand the effects of interresponse times (e.g., Zeiler, 1977), conditions for the establishment of stimulus control (e.g., Terrace, 1966), interactions among drugs and behavior (e.g., Dews, 1978), choice and preference behavior (e.g., Herrnstein, 1961), avoidance (e.g., Sidman, 1953), anxiety (e.g., Estes & Skinner, 1941), and psychophysics (e.g., Blough, 1958).
The tradition of research on schedules of reinforcement allows one to address the general aspects of operant behavior, namely, behavior that is selected and maintained by its consequences. There has also been growing interest in the behavioral analysis of social phenomena and culture, which constitute the third (cultural) level of selection. Behavior analysts have started using concepts and methods that are employed for studying operant behavior to investigate interactions between more than one individual. Sometimes, an individual's behavior produces consequences for himself in a specific context (i.e., an operant contingency) and also functions as part of the environment of the operant contingency regarding another individual's behavior. These interlocking contingencies Skinner, 1957) account for social behavior. Demonstrating that the behavior of one person is a relevant part of the environment of another in experimental contexts allows the description of social behavior from a natural science perspective. Early examples of this attempt include studies on cooperation Hake, Vukelich, & Olvera, 1975;Marwell & Schmitt, 1975;, competition Lindsley, 1966), empathy , and altruism .
More recently, the proposition of the concept of metacontingency has enabled a step forward in dealing with the behavior of a group as an organized whole or as a unit itself. The concept proposes to account for the "evolved cultural environment" that was mentioned by  and is analogous to the operant contingency. Metacontingencies involve arrangements between the joint behaviors of two or more individuals and a common consequence that is relevant to them. In more technical terms, recurring interlocking contingencies produce aggregate effects on which a cultural consequence is contingent (Glenn, , 2010). The cultural consequence depends on the interlocking behaviors of two or more individuals, as opposed to individual consequences, which only depend on the response of one individual . The concept of metacontingency implies the recurrence of social interactions that produce a common result and a relevant consequence for one or all of the people who are involved (cultural consequence). The interlocking contingencies that result in certain "positive" cultural consequences will tend to increase in frequency, be selected. In this sense, a metacontingency can be viewed as a contingency of cultural selection .
Considering the similarities between operant behavior and the processes that are described by the concept of metacontingency, Hunter (2012) suggested the notion of the culturant to identify the cultural unit that is analogous to the operant at the ontogenetic level (i.e., the unit that is selected and evolves from its interaction with the selecting environment). Thus, a culturant involves the set of all recurring interlocking contingencies that are a function of a cultural consequence.  stressed that metacontingencies can account for the permanence of at least some organized social interactions through time and even over generations. Frequently, once a culturant has been selected, it may recur even when the original members of the group are replaced. Glenn and Malott (2004) applied the metacontingency concept to analyze how for-profit organizations change over time. In a restaurant, for example, interlocking contingencies that involve waiters, managers, chefs, and cooks result in the food that is served. The restaurant's customers are responsible for the relevant cultural consequence: monthly monetary revenue. The restaurant, as an organization, will survive as long as revenues are positive and consistent. The restaurant's food will change as customers' preferences change. In other words, the restaurant's food preparation (culturant) is selected by the cultural consequence that comprises revenues. Many other social phenomena have also been interpreted as involving metacontingencies: superstition (Marques, Leite, & Benvenuti, 2012), absenteeism (Camden & Ludwig, 2013), social reform (Bortoloti & D'Agostino, 2007;Lamal, 1991), and practices in correctional settings (Ellis, 1991), among others.
Inspired by the work of behavioral sociologist James ,  conducted the first experiment of cultural selection that employed the notion of metacontingency. In each trial, a set of four participants had to consensually choose one row in an 8 ϫ 8 matrix. The experimenter then selected a column in the matrix, and the intersection between a row and column indicated a hit or a miss (i.e., a gain or loss of tokens that were exchangeable for money) for the set of participants as a whole. At the end of each trial, the participants had to distribute the gains among themselves. Hits or misses in each trial depended on how the participants distributed gains that were obtained in the previous trial. Two conditions were arranged in a reversal design. One condition required an equal distribution of gains in one trial for the production of a hit in the next trial. The other condition required an unequal distribution. The two sets of four participants in the study both adjusted their distribution of gains according to the requirements of the experimental conditions (i.e., they distributed their gains equally or unequally). The interlocking behavioral contingencies that led to an announcement regarding equal or unequal distributions constituted the culturants on which the consequence was contingent. Because this consequence (i.e., the gain or loss of tokens) was contingent on the product of the interlocking behavior of the participants, it was called a cultural consequence. The recurrence of a particular pattern of distribution of gains as a function of a cultural consequence is what characterizes cultural selection. The functional relationship between culturants and the selecting cultural consequence is the metacontingency.
Since the study of , research protocols have been developed to study metacontingencies. In addition to tasks that are similar to the one used by e.g., Borba, 2013;Franceschini, Samelo, Xavier, & Hunziker, 2012;Marques, 2012;Tadaiesky & Tourinho, 2012;, other protocols have been proposed. One of them involves a computerized task, in which participants insert numbers into designated spaces on the screen, below numbers that are presented by the computer . In this case, two contingencies can be programmed. One contingency can be programmed for the individual operant behavior (e.g., numerical digits can be inserted, which when added to the number that is presented by the computer result in an odd number, thus producing a given individual consequence). Another contingency can be programmed for the culturant (e.g., the sum of the numbers that are inserted by one participant must be lower than the sum of the numbers that are inserted by another participant for a cultural consequence to be produced). Another experimental protocol that is used to study metacontingencies employs a task that is based on the prisoner's dilemma game, derived from game theory . Different but conjugated contingencies for the operant behavior and cultur-ants are programmed. The response is always a choice of one of two possible letters (X or Y) or colors (red or green). The participants must form a determined combination of choices (e.g., all choose X, or all choose Y) to produce a cultural consequence. Another research strategy uses an adaptation of a chess game. Two participants move the only piece they have across the chessboard, and each trial ends when both pieces meet in adjacent cells, resulting in a cultural consequence for the dyad de Carvalho, Couto, Sandaker, & Todorov, 2015;Henriques, Souza, Navarini, & Todorov, 2015;Vasconcelos, 2014). Still other different protocols were used by Hunter (2012), Smith, Houmanfar, andLouis (2011).
Metacontingency is a unit of analysis that aims to describe cultural changes and, at the same time, the behavioral change of the individuals who comprise the culture. In the aforementioned studies, operant behavior occurred only in trials; therefore, moment-to-moment changes in the frequency of behavior could not be tracked . The analysis of changes in the frequency of behavior, such as those that are possible in typical analyses of schedules of reinforcement, can help us understand interactions between the ontogenetic and cultural levels of selection by consequences. Currently, experimental and conceptual interest in cultural selection in behavior analysis interacts only incipiently with the experimental contribution of schedules of reinforcement. Studies of schedules of reinforcement have shown the course of selection at the ontogenetic level. Studies such as those by  show that selection occurs at another level of analysis, namely the cultural level. If we can observe these two selection processes that are underway at the same time, then we could program arrangements that are redundant or conflict with each other. Hence, there is a clear demand for the development of experimental models that allow analyses of moment-tomoment interactions between behavioral-and cultural-level selection processes.

Multidisciplinary Study of Cultural Evolution
Social behavior, social learning, and culture are topics that intersect within several academic disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, sociology, and biology. As can be expected of a multidisciplinary subject, these topics have been studied from different theoretical and methodological perspectives. The experimental analysis of behavior is one such perspective. A different, but compatible, view stems from the work of Boyd and Richerson (1985;Richerson & Boyd, 2005). These authors defined culture as knowledge, beliefs, and values that are inherited through social learning and expressed in behavior and artifacts. They also assume that culture evolves according to basic Darwinian principles, similar to those by which biological species evolve (also see Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981;Mesoudi, 2011;Mesoudi et al., 2006). These principles are variation, differential fitness, and inheritance. Cultural traits (e.g., beliefs, behaviors, skills, knowledge, etc.) vary among and within individuals and groups; are differentially preserved and reproduced because of competition for expression, attention, and memory; and are inherited or transmitted through mechanisms of social learning (Mesoudi & Whiten, 2008).
Accounts of social behavior and culture that were inspired by Darwinian theory have existed since the time of Darwin himself (Laland & Brown, 2011), and many important scholars from different fields have developed this idea. Mesoudi (2007Mesoudi ( , 2011 suggested that Darwinian theory is the most useful model for a theory of cultural evolution and the one that is most likely to facilitate an evolutionary synthesis for the study of culture. In the same integrative direction, Heyes (2012aHeyes ( , 2012b stressed the need for an approach between social learning studies that are performed by researchers from the biological sciences and researchers with a background in psychology. This trend has already begun with collaborations between experimental psychologists, anthropologists, and biologists who are interested in cultural evolution (Baum, Paciotti, Richerson, Lubell, & McElreath, 2012;Efferson et al., 2007;McElreath et al., 2005). Heyes' recent position, however, suggests that this integration has not yet been fully achieved, and it is necessary to use knowledge about behavioral principles to deal with cultural selection. Smaldino (2014) claimed that "the development of a cultural evolutionary theory . . . has suffered from an overemphasis on the experi-ences and behaviors of individuals at the expense of acknowledging complex group organization and behavior" (p. 243).
Our software is called Free Culturant. It attempts to account for individual behavior and, at the same time, the behaviors of more than two individuals relative to each other, acting as an organized group. The software allows moment-to-moment measurements of the frequency of both individual behavior and interrelated behaviors.

Free Culturant Software
Free Culturant was developed in Delphi XE2 for the Windows operating system and is approved in extensions of Windows XP and Windows 7 with at least 512 MB of RAM and 100 MB of hard disk space. It has two executables: "client" (for availability of the task for participants) and "server" (for the configuration of sessions, control of programmed contingencies, and recording of data by the experimenter). Components of the Jedi Visual Component Library were used to establish networking among computers. The network may be isolated from the external environment through a wireless router that provides its own Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) service. With this network established, it is possible to transmit the action order to start or end a session, present programmed consequences, and so on.

Experimental Task: General Properties
The software allows up to four participants to simultaneously work on the experimental task, which resembles a virtual game. Depending on the number of participants in the session, up to four quadrants can be seen on each of the client computer screens (Figure 1). Each quadrant has a water tap (the manipulandum, which can be operated with the left mouse button or keyboard) and a jug. The software layout for the participants was initially designed with the aim to instruct participants that the activity would consist of a game in which they would be able to earn money. The game would be about a hypothetical situation, in which residents of a small city have gone several days without water, and the participants can contribute by filling water jugs for them. The participants are instructed that they should use the active manipu-landum to find the best way to produce gains. The software, however, permits different instructions to be presented before beginning the task. The main feature of Free Culturant is that it allows the simultaneous programming of a contingency for operant behavior and a metacontingency for culturants.

Programming Operant Contingencies
Operant contingencies specify that pressing the button (or key) produces a portion of water in the jug, accompanied by a specific sound according to a given schedule of reinforcement. The arrangements that can be programmed are: continuous reinforcement (CRF), in which every response in the operant class produces reinforcement; the four basic schedules of reinforcement (FR, VR, FI, and VI); and two schedules based exclusively on the time between presentations of reinforcers. In these cases, the participant does not need to emit a response; the reinforcers are delivered independently of behavior according to a specified interval that can be fixed (fixed-time [FT]) or variable (variable-time [VT]). In addition to these arrangements, the software offers the option of extinction, which consists of suspending reinforcement for individual behavior.

Programming Metacontingencies
In the Free Culturant software, every time the participants emit a culturant that is specified by the experimenter, a portion of water is added to a water tank that is located in a common area above the participants' quadrants, and the word "Bonus" appears at the intersection of the quadrants, accompanied by a specific sound (see Figure 1). The bonus can function as a cultural consequence because it is contingent on culturants and not on individual behavior. Bonuses that are accumulated during the session are recorded on the hydrometer that is located in the common area beside the water tank.
The procedure that is proposed herein to study the selection of culturants in a metacontingency resembles, in many respects, those that are used in studies of cooperation (see Schmitt, 1998). , for example, developed an experimental apparatus in which, in separate rooms, two subjects sat in front of a panel with a plunger. A "cooperative response" was recorded when the two participants' responses of pulling the plunger occurred within an interval of up to .5 s from each other. A participant's response was indicated to his counterpart through a cue light. Despite the fact that this can be viewed as social behavior,  suggested that the high rates of cooperation in Cohen and Lindsley's procedure could have occurred even when the behavior of one participant was not relevant to the behavior of the other participant. Schmitt and Marwell proposed an alternative to the reinforcement requirements, adding a delay between the responses of the participants. Their modified task required an interval that was longer than 3 s but smaller than 3.5 s between the two participants' responses. A response of the first participant turned on a light in the panel of the other participant for 3 s, and reinforcement occurred if the second participant pulled the plunger up to .5 s after the light turned off. Such an alteration effectively ensured that the participants were responding under the control of the other participant's behavior.
Considering the results of Schmitt and Marwell (1968), Free Culturant allows six different arrangements for culturants. The first option is designated as "Same Time" and very similar to the cooperation response that was specified by . This metacontin- gency requires every participant to emit a response on the manipulandum within an interval that is specified by the experimenter. For example, the researcher can program the cultural consequence to be presented only if all participants press the button within an interval of .3 s. The second option is designated as "Spaced Responses" and similar to the cooperation response in the study by Schmitt and Marwell. This metacontingency requires the participants to emit responses in a spaced manner. For example, if the researcher stipulates a spacing of 3 s, then a cultural consequence will be presented only when the response of one participant occurs after an interval of at least 3 s, following the last response of the other participant. Any participant can respond first. If the criterion is reached, then the programmed consequence is immediately presented. The third metacontingency option is designated as "Sequence" and requires an order of responses among the participants, with or without the requirement of an interval between responses. For example, the experimenter can distinguish within the program that the cultural consequence will be presented only if the four participants respond in the order P2, P4, P1, and P3. In two other arrangements, bonuses are released independently of culturants, based solely on the passage of time (analogous to FT and VT schedules of reinforcement). Independent schedules (VT and FT) were included to allow the study of superstition at the individual and cultural levels (see Marques et al., 2012). The last metacontingency that can be programmed is extinction (i.e., the cultural consequence is suspended).
Therefore, Free Culturant allows the programming of eight different operant contingencies (schedules of reinforcement) and six different metacontingencies, each permitting the specification of innumerous values (e.g., FR1, FR2, FR3, and so on; "Spaced Response" 1 s, 2 s, 3 s, and so on). Given these options, the experimenter can plan 48 general arrangements. Some arrangements enable the participants to obtain all or most of the reinforcers and cultural consequences that are programmed. In these cases, operant contingency and metacontingency do not conflict. In other arrangements, meeting the operant contingency criterion may imply not producing or producing very few cultural consequences that are specified by the metacontingency. Conversely, meeting the metacontingency criterion may result in receiving fewer individual reinforcers than would be possible from the scheduled operant contingency. In these cases, we say that there is a conflict between the operant contingency and metacontingency. Table 1 shows all of the possible combinations between operant contingencies and metacontingencies, and whether the arrangements do or do not conflict. Importantly, a greater or lesser degree of conflict will depend on the parameters that are specified in the operant contingency (e.g., interval range, number of responses in the ratio, etc.) and metacontingency (e.g., spacing length, range limits within which participants must respond, etc.). However, the combinations between schedules that do not require responses (VT and FT) and the conditions under which the reinforcement or cultural consequences are suspended (extinction) never result in conflict.
Many other parameters, besides the ones that are embedded in the software, can be manipulated to study different research questions. For instance, the relative values of individual consequences (filled jugs) and cultural consequences (portions of water in the common tank) may be experimentally varied by exchanging each of them for different quantities of money. The way the cultural consequence is distributed between participants (e.g., equally or unequally) is yet another variable that is susceptible to analysis.

Configuring Experimental Sessions
The Free Culturant user interface does not require knowledge of programming language, only knowledge of the parameters that are necessary to configure operant contingencies and metacontingencies. A session in Free Culturant is set up in a single window with three tabs. Figure 2 shows the first tab ("Configuration") where the experimenter selects all of the contingency parameters to be programmed for individual behavior and culturants. These parameters include (a) the manipulandum (the left mouse button or a key on the keyboard, chosen by the experimenter), (b) the reinforcement schedule for the individual behavior (the eight possibilities described previously), (c) the type of culturant that will produce the cultural consequence (the six options described previously), and (d) the duration of the session, which may be specified in minutes and/or number of bonuses accumulated.
Concerning operant contingencies, when the experimenter opts for FR, FI, and FT schedules, the interval length or ratio associated with the schedule of reinforcement needs to be specified. By selecting a variable schedule (VR, VI, or VT), the experimenter has to choose the method for generating the values of interval/time or ratio. Figure 2 shows the window with the options to generate the values in a VI schedule. The experimenter can choose "Shuffle values automatically" or "Enter values manually." Automatic shuffle is based on the method that was proposed by Pessôa and Buffara (2005). The experimenter needs to indicate the value of the schedule (e.g., 15 for a VI 15 s), the range of values that must be considered in the shuffling (e.g., varying from 1-60), and the number of elements that must be randomized. The values are used in the order they appear and come back to the first value when the last number is used. The software allows the experimenter to change the order in which values should appear. To enter values manually, the experimenter simply types the value for each element of the interval or ratio.
If the experimenter chooses VT or FT for metacontingencies, then he has to specify the interval length between presentations of cultural consequences, following the same logic that was described for operant contingency. By choosing the options "Same Time" and "Spaced Responses," the experimenter has to specify the interval range within which participants must respond and the minimum interval between responses, respectively. In the "Sequence" option, the experimenter may or may not require spacing between responses. The sequence of responses that are required will be defined by the order in which the participants are linked (i.e., the first to be linked should be the first to respond and so on; see the next subsection).

Linking Participants
After setting up the session, the experimenter needs to select the client computers that will be active during the session. Figure 3 shows the software tab "Participants." All of the computers that are connected to the server will appear in this tab and can be linked as participants. By selecting a computer, the experimenter can en- ter the participant's name and add individual instructions that only this participant can access at the beginning of his or her participation, before the presentation of the general instructions (described below). Up to four participants can be linked.

Adding General Instructions
The last step in programming an experimental session with Free Culturant consists of adding general instructions that are presented simultaneously to all of the participants after the individual instructions are given (if such individual instructions were programmed, as shown in Figure 4).

Running an Experimental Session
After reading the instructions, each participant needs to click on a command that initiates the task. The task is initiated after all of the participants have clicked the command. Each participant sees his or her quadrant (the only one that is active for him/her) with a different color in the background (green, pink, yellow, and gray) while the other quadrants appear to him/her with a white background. However, whenever a participant responds, his or her quadrant flashes to the others (Figure 1, left). In the upper right corner of each quadrant is a field where individual gains are recorded, signaled by a small figure of a water jug. The bonuses are registered in the hydrometer that is located at the right of the water tank in the common area. Free Culturant allows all of the participants to observe the actions and consequences that are presented for each participant and the group as a whole. When the session ends, a "Thank You" message appears on the screen.
The software chronologically records all events of the session, including all of the participants' responses and individual and cultural consequences. These data are exported to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Pilot Study
A pilot study was conducted to evaluate whether the Free Culturant software can produce an experimental model of cultural selection. The more specific experimental question was to compare cultural selection under conditions in which the production of cultural consequences would involve the production of fewer individual reinforcers (i.e., conflict), with a further condition in which meeting both the operant contingency and metacontingency was possible (i.e., no conflict).

Participants
Six undergraduate students, five women and one man (age range, 18 -22 years), were randomly distributed into two triads.

Setting and Apparatus
Experimental sessions were conducted in an approximately 20 m 2 room. We used four computers (one was the server, and three were the clients), each connected to a mouse (the keyboard was removed during the experimental task) and programmed with Free Culturant software. The computers were networked through a router and arranged side by side (except the server) on a rectangular table (approximately 3 m in length).

Procedure
The two triads were exposed to different experimental conditions. For Triad 1 (con-flict), a VR2 schedule was programmed for the presentation of individual consequences. In this schedule, an average of every two responses produced a portion of water in the jug. Ten portions of water filled a jug, and a new one was presented. The number of filled jugs was shown in the upper right corner of each quadrant (see Figure 1). The operant contingency remained unaltered throughout the experiment. The metacontingency, when programmed, required an interval of time between the participants' responses (spacing), which varied from 1 to 2 s. Two sessions, approximately 40 min each, were conducted with Triad 1. At the beginning of each session, the participants were instructed to fill the water jugs by clicking the left button of the mouse on the water tap. They were told that it sometimes would be possible to produce a bonus, which would result in the water tank being filled; for this to happen, the participants would have to work together. They were not told what kind of interaction would produce bonuses. Each filled jug yielded one Brazilian cent for the participant, and each bonus yielded 10 Brazilian cents for the triad. At the end of the session, each participant received his or her individual amount, and the triad could discuss how to distribute the total accumulated bonuses; the triad was free to decide (i.e., there were no criteria, rules, or other types of intervention on the part of the experimenter). In Session 1, the experimental design involved a baseline condition in which only the operant contingency was in effect, followed by a metacontingency condition with a spacing of 1 s (Meta 1 s) and a return to the baseline condition. Session 2 was initiated with a Meta 1 s condition that progressed to Meta 2 s, Meta 1.5 s, and Meta 2 s.
For Triad 2 (no conflict), the operant contingency was a VI 10 s schedule. The first response after an average of 10 s since the last reinforcement produced a portion of water. Ten portions of water filled the jug. The metacontingency was the same as for Triad 1 (i.e., spacing between responses), and the interval that was required between responses was changed during the experiment. Three 40 min sessions were performed. The instructions and procedures were the same as for Triad 1. The experimental design involved a baseline condition, followed by Meta 1 s in the first session, Meta 1 s and Meta 1.5 s in the second session, and Meta 1.5 s, Meta 2 s, and a return to the baseline in the third session.

Results and Discussion
Figures 5 and 6 show the number of responses per minute and a cumulative record of culturants that reached the criterion for the production of cultural consequences in each of the experimental conditions for Triad 1 and Triad 2, respectively. During baseline conditions, although no cultural consequences were presented, all of the culturants that would meet the criterion of Meta 1 s were recorded (except for the second baseline of Triad 2, in which the criterion of Meta 2 s was used).
During the first baseline condition, the participants in the two triads emitted an average of 200 responses/min. The culturant that would produce cultural consequences (if the Meta 1 s condition was in effect) occurred five times (.4/min) for Triad 1 and did not occur for Triad 2. For both triads, the overlapping of a metacontingency resulted in a sharp change in response rates. After production of the first bonus, the participants in Triad 1 began to emit an average of 48 responses/min, and the participants in Triad 2 emitted between 11 and 25 responses/min. Because the metacontingency specified that spacing was necessary between the participants' responses, reaching this crite- rion implied a reduction of response frequency. Once a bonus was produced, both triads adapted their behaviors to the requirements of the metacontingency and systematically produced the cultural consequence. However, both triads pro-duced far fewer bonuses than would be possible given perfect coordination. With a spacing of 1 s, approximately 12 bonuses could be produced per minute, but Triad 1 produced only an average of four to seven bonuses per minute in the  Meta 1 s and Meta 1.5 s conditions (considering the production from the first bonus until the end of each condition). For Triad 2, the average was approximately two to three bonuses per minute.
When the metacontingency was suspended in the return to baseline, Triad 1 responded again with a high frequency near the baseline, whereas Triad 2 continued to emit a low response rate. These data are partly explained by considering the schedules that were used for individual behavior. In a VR schedule, more responses result in more reinforcers. The VI schedule does not require a minimum number of responses but only one response at the correct time. Therefore, in this latter schedule, a high response rate does not imply a loss of reinforcement. Because the VI schedule interval was short (10 s), high-frequency responding in the first baseline resulted in obtaining virtually all of the available reinforcements, without the response cost being too high. The metacontingency condition and the emission of spaced responding could have caused the participants in Triad 2 to contact the operant contingency more accurately. Thus, when the metacontingency was suspended in the second baseline, the response rate remained low, despite the loss of coordination (i.e., in the final 6 min, no culturant occurred). Importantly, however, Triad 2 had longer exposure to the metacontingency condition before returning to baseline. This history may also have contributed to the maintenance of the low frequency of responses in this condition.
The schedule that was programmed for individual behavior can also help explain why producing a spacing of 2 s between responses was only achieved by Triad 2. In Triad 1, the increase in spacing from 1.5 to 2 s caused an effect that was similar to an extinction condition. The requirement of spacing between responses is less conflicting with an interval schedule than with a ratio schedule. In the latter case, more reinforcers are lost when more spacing is required.
Despite differences in programmed contingencies for individual behavior and in the order of exposure to the experimental conditions, the results clearly showed the selection of a given pattern of coordination of the participants' behaviors (culturants) when the production of a common consequence (i.e., a consequence for the triad as a whole) depended on its occur-rence. The frequency of the target culturant was zero or near zero in the first baseline, but when the cultural consequence was introduced (i.e., contingent on that culturant in a metacontingency arrangement), they began to occur at a constant frequency. The recurrence of target culturants characterizes selection at the cultural level. The suspension of the metacontingency in both triads showed that the occurrence of culturants depended on the cultural consequence. When it was suspended, the frequency of culturants dropped. Therefore, the present study demonstrated the selection (i.e., recurrence) of a unit that exceeded individual behavior and involved the behavior of three individuals, each under the control of the others, thus comprising a culturant. In summary, this experiment can be taken as an experimental model of cultural selection.
The free-operant-analogous procedure that is enabled by Free Culturant software and was used in this pilot study has advantages over procedures that have been used previously to study metacontingencies. Experimental methods of studying cultural selection and metacontingency have mostly involved trial procedures, in which participants perform a task together and, for each trial, individual reinforcements and cultural consequences are programmed (cf., ). However, trial procedures restrict the occurrence of behavioral and cultural events to isolated periods of observation, which prevents the continuous measurement of culturants (i.e., measurements of frequency). Additionally, trial procedures do not allow investigations of aspects of the distribution of individual or cultural consequences over time, such as schedules that are based on time or interval criteria.
Free Culturant software allows the measurement of all instances of responses without the limitations that are imposed by trial procedures, such that frequency can be used as a measure of behavioral and/or cultural change. The use of a single response key enables an experimentally simple analysis of the processes of selection on a moment-to-moment basis. It also allows researchers to study the molecular properties of a culturant, such as momentary changes in rate, temporal spacing, patterns of distribution between presentations of cultural consequences, and other properties that have been reported to differentiate performance in schedules of reinforcement (cf., .  conducted a study on cooperation and pointed out that the techniques of operant conditioning enable a more continuous record of the process of coordination between participants. Our software uses this classic strategy to program schedules of reinforcement to study operant behavior and simultaneously allows the programming of different consequences for culturants. The behavior that is generated by schedules of reinforcement may or may not conflict with what is demanded by metacontingencies. Hunter (2012) and Morford and Cihon (2013) addressed the question of conflicts between operant contingencies and metacontingencies in experimental designs. The central argument was that when the operant contingency and metacontingency work together (i.e., when the same patterns of responses are selected), assessing the effects of cultural consequences separately from the effects of reinforcements can be difficult. Operant contingencies would be sufficient to explain the recurrence of culturants. However, the results of Triad 2 do not support this argument. Although there was no conflict between the operant contingency and metacontingency during the condition in which both were in effect, we could observe the selection of culturants. And we could also observe the degree to which culturants were under the control of a metacontingency because they ceased to occur when the cultural consequence was suspended. During metacontingency extinction, the response rate remained low, but the participants did not coordinate their actions to meet the metacontingency requirements that were previously in force.

Concluding Remarks
The many arrangements among contingencies for operants and culturants that are available in Free Culturant allow researchers to explore various topics that are related to social behavior and cultural evolution, such as cooperation, competition, altruism, and several forms of group organization. One advantage of the software is that it allows experimental procedures for the study of choice between working alone or being part of a group. Most impor-tantly, Free Culturant allows the experimental study of a unit that exceeds individual behavior and involves the organization of a group of individuals who work together and produce consequences that cannot be produced without such organization (i.e., culturants).
In a recent paper, Smaldino (2014) argued that most of the current work on cultural evolution has focused solely on the transmission of individual-level traits. For this reason, the author proposed a conceptual extension of cultural evolution theory, particularly related to evolutionary competition between cultural groups. The key concept in the author's work was the emergent group-level trait. A group-level trait is the effect of social organization that cannot be expressed by any single individual in the group. Instead, these traits emerge from a structured organization of individuals. This effect or product of an organization of individuals promotes cultural differences in fitness and is inherited via cultural transmission. Smaldino proposed that the group-level trait can be a unit of selection at the cultural level. Smaldino's (2014) discussion is similar, in many respects, to the one in which behavior analysts engage when studying the processes in the third (cultural) level of selection by consequences. The metacontingency concept was proposed to account for a unit of cultural selection that is different from the unit of ontogenetic selection, individual (operant) behavior. As pointed out by , this concept addresses evolution by selection when what evolves is not the actions of individuals but rather recurrences of interlocking contingencies that function as an integrated unit and result in a product that affects the probability of future recurrences of these culturants (as Hunter, 2012, later termed them). The outcomes that are produced by culturants are not the cumulative effect of people who behave individually; rather they are effects of interrelated behaviors of two or more individuals who act as a group, which sounds very similar to the group-level trait concept that was proposed by Smaldino. Thus, the metacontingency concept may help explain the origin and evolution of complex cultural-level entities, such as schools, legislatures, government agencies, religions, companies, and so on Todorov, 2010;.
Following the theoretical emphasis on the transmission of ideas and practices among individuals, many experimental studies in the field of cultural evolution have investigated mechanisms of cultural transmission (Barrett & Nyhof, 2001;Caldwell & Millen, 2008;Griffiths, Christian, & Kalish, 2008;Kalish, Griffiths, & Lewandowsky, 2007;Mesoudi, 2008;Mesoudi & Whiten, 2004). Others are doing so using mathematical models (Boyd & Richerson, 1985;Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981;McElreath et al., 2005). However, few studies have addressed the question of how cultural practices originate. We believe that this work can contribute to this area by experimentally demonstrating the origin of a practice by means of a cultural selection mechanism called metacontingency.
Finally, the three levels of selection by consequences that comprise the explanatory model of  appear to offer a betweenlevel perspective on which groups and individuals are distinct but intrinsically connected (Smaldino, 2014) and the organization of individuals with different functions that give rise to a unit of cultural selection-exactly what, according to Smaldino, would still be missing in cultural evolution theory.