Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior最新文献

Problems related to "self-control" can occur in situations in which a single choice produces both reinforcing and aversive consequences. We exposed rats to choice situations in which a press on one lever produced only food and a press on a second lever produced food and delayed shock. Within and across conditions of four experiments, adjusting-delay procedures were used to identify indifference points-delays at which the consequences produced by the two levers exerted equal control over choice. Experiment 1 investigated the effects of intensity and duration of delayed shock on choice between a small food reinforcer or a large food reinforcer followed by delayed shock. Experiment 3 investigated the effects of shock's delay on choice between food delivered immediately and followed by delayed shock or food delivered after a delay. Experiments 2 and 4 investigated the effects of signaling the delayed shock in Experiments 1 and 3, respectively. The effects of delayed shock on choice were a direct function of shock intensity and shock duration and an inverse function of shock's delay. Signals did not affect choice systematically. The results extend findings from research on the punishment of operant behavior and on the temporal discounting of reinforcing and punishing events.

Measures of the relative reinforcing value of alcohol (i.e., alcohol demand) are associated with concurrent and future rates of alcohol use. Given that college-age young adults may fail to predict escalation of substance use, the present project explores the novel construct of projected future demand by college students who engage in heavy drinking and whether it can predict future alcohol use. During an initial session, participants completed a standard alcohol purchase task, a projected alcohol purchase task (i.e., "three months from now"), and measures of past-month alcohol consumption and associated risk. During a follow-up session 3 months later, participants completed another standard alcohol purchase task and measures of consumption and risk. We found that college students (n = 40) projected increases in demand for 3 months in the future but did not exhibit subsequent changes in demand. In addition, measures of projected future demand were associated with subsequent alcohol use. However, when baseline alcohol use and risk were included as additional predictors, projected demand was not a unique predictor of future alcohol use. The current study signals the potential of novel measures of projected demand, which when contrasted with measures of current demand, may lend predictive utility on subsequent trajectories of alcohol use.

Renewal is defined as relapse of a previously extinguished target behavior following a change in context. This form of relapse has been shown to occur when an alternative source of reinforcement that was made available during extinction of the target response is abruptly switched to a different type of reinforcement. The current experiment examined a method for mitigating renewal produced by switching reinforcement by fading reinforcer type during extinction. In Phase 1, rats' target-lever pressing was reinforced with one type of reinforcement (O1). In Phase 2, lever pressing was extinguished and noncontingent reinforcers were delivered. The forward fading group initially experienced all alternative (O2) reinforcement, and the percentage of O1 reinforcement was increased across sessions. The reverse fading group initially experienced 90% O1 and 10% O2 reinforcement, and the percentage of O2 reinforcement was increased across sessions. A third group received delivery of O2 only, serving as a control. In Phase 3, all groups received noncontingent delivery of O1 reinforcement only. Robust renewal was seen in the control group relative to both fading groups. Furthermore, levels of renewal were lower and did not differ significantly between the forward fading and reverse fading group. These findings provide further insight into the role of context in relapse and may provide suggestions for future clinical applications.

This article introduces shinybeez, a free and open-source web application designed to streamline behavioral economic analyses of demand and discounting data. Although quantitative modeling of behavioral economic phenomena has increased in popularity and led to translational successes in clinical practice and policy, complex analyses have remained a barrier for many researchers and practitioners. The shinybeez application addresses this gap by providing an intuitive interface for conducting descriptive and inferential analyses without requiring programming expertise. The app integrates features previously scattered across multiple tools, allowing users to upload data, calculate empirical measures, identify systematic data sets, fit nonlinear models, and visualize results—all within a single platform. The shinybeez application supports various types of analysis for demand and discounting data, including indifference point data and the 27-Item Monetary Choice Questionnaire. Built on R Shiny and leveraging existing R packages, the app ensures reproducibility and consistency with underlying analytical methods while remaining flexible for future enhancements. The advantages of shinybeez include its accessibility through web browsers or local installation, ability to handle large data sets, and customizable data visualization options. By consolidating behavioral economic tools into a user-friendly interface, shinybeez is intended to broaden the reach of these analytical techniques and facilitate their application in addressing societal issues.

Tobacco use is the leading cause of death globally and in the United States. After decades of decline, driven by decreases in combusted tobacco use, nicotine product use has increased due to electronic nicotine delivery systems, also known as e-cigarettes or vapes. Preclinical models of nicotine self-administration can serve as important lodestars in the search for effective intervention and prevention tactics. Current variants of the preclinical models have substantial limitations, however. Therefore, we created the rodent electronic nicotine delivery system (RENDS), a novel low-cost nonproprietary nose-only preclinical model of nicotine aerosol self-administration. We confirmed that RENDS sequesters nicotine aerosol in the nose port by measuring fine particulate matter (PM <2.5 microns) generated by e-cigarettes. We also showed that rats robustly self-administer flavored nicotine aerosol, resulting in high blood levels of cotinine (the major nicotine metabolite) and spontaneous somatic withdrawal symptoms. Thus, we provide validation of the operation and function of the RENDS, opening the door to an open-source preclinical aerosol model of nicotine self-administration that is relatively low in cost. Four existing operant chambers can be retrofitted with the RENDS for less than $325/chamber. All RENDS diagrams and plans for custom-designed components are on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/x2pqf/?view_only=775b55435b8e428f98e6da384ef7889d).

Robots are increasingly used alongside Skinner boxes to train animals in operant conditioning tasks. Similarly, animals are being employed in artificial intelligence research to train various algorithms. However, both types of experiments rely on unidirectional learning, where one partner—the animal or the robot—acts as the teacher and the other as the student. Here, we present a novel animal–robot interaction paradigm that enables bidirectional, or mutual, learning between a Wistar rat and a robot. The two agents interacted with each other to achieve specific goals, dynamically adjusting their actions based on the positive (rewarding) or negative (punishing) signals provided by their partner. The paradigm was tested in silico with two artificial reinforcement learning agents and in vivo with different rat–robot pairs. In the virtual trials, both agents were able to adapt their behavior toward reward maximization, achieving mutual learning. The in vivo experiments revealed that rats rapidly acquired the behaviors necessary to receive the reward and exhibited passive avoidance learning for negative signals when the robot displayed a steep learning curve. The developed paradigm can be used in various animal–machine interactions to test the efficacy of different learning rules and reinforcement schedules.

Due to the undesirable effects of operant renewal for behavioral interventions, recent research has advocated for the advancement of renewal mitigation strategies. One strategy includes the use of extinction cues, which are stimuli used to establish discriminative control over responding in the second context that are subsequently transferred to the initial context. A second strategy involves context fading, which refers to progressively increasing the similarity between the second context and the initial context. The current study evaluated the separate and combined effects of these techniques using a preclinical human laboratory arrangement. Participants were exposed to the extinction cue strategy, the context fading strategy, both strategies, or neither strategy during a three-phase ABA renewal procedure using differential reinforcement of an alternative response combined with extinction. The results indicated that context fading or combining context fading with an extinction cue was effective at mitigating renewal. The use of an extinction cue alone reduced renewal relative to the control group, but this difference was not statistically significant. The results are discussed in terms of methodological and theoretical differences across strategies as well as implications for future research on renewal mitigation strategies.

The role of bidirectional naming in the emergence of analogical relations was investigated in four typically developing children between the ages 5 and 7 years. All participants learned to tact both the categories (clothes, furniture, and vehicles) and relations (same and different) among nine stimuli. They were subsequently tested on analogical responding during which they were presented with two stimuli belonging to the same or different categories and asked to select the comparison that matched the sample. During the last analogy test, we asked participants to tell us why they selected a certain comparison. Relational tact training produced emergent analogical responding in two participants after exposure to relational listener tests, whereas the other two required direct training on baseline analogy relations. All participants met criterion during derived analogy tests in accordance with symmetry and transitivity. The results of this study suggest that participants passed analogy tests by relationally tacting the sample (i.e., speaker) and reacting to its product by selecting the correct comparison (i.e., listener). This supports and extends previous findings suggesting that children must also engage in behaviors consistent with bidirectional naming to respond accurately to analogy tasks.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, it is vital to understand how major global stressors influence substance use, including cannabis-related outcomes. The Marijuana Purchase Task assesses hypothetical cannabis demand (i.e., relative reinforcing value) and can detect contextual alterations. This study paired prospective cannabis demand assessment with qualitative inquiry to explore how COVID-19 impacted cannabis use behavior. Individuals previously enrolled in a laboratory cannabis administration study opted in to a remote follow-up survey (n = 41, 46% female). Participants were categorized as those who did or did not increase use based on self-reported changes in cannabis flower use and provided contextual explanations regarding pandemic-related influences on cannabis outcomes. General linear models with repeated measures examined mean differences in demand by occasion (i.e., before/during COVID-19), group (i.e., those who did/did not increase use), and their interaction. Those who increased use exhibited significantly higher demand during the pandemic; those who did not increase use exhibited similar demand across time revealing a Group × Time interaction. Thematic analysis contextualized quantitative findings, explaining external influences that affect use and demand (e.g., changes in cost, access, environment). COVID-19 differentially impacted cannabis use and demand, with prepandemic use affecting trajectories. Contextual influences (i.e., availability, free time, income) facilitate the escalation of use under conditions of extreme global stress.

Previous research has demonstrated several procedural modifications that improve the sensitivity of human behavior to relative rates of conditioned reinforcement or S+ production. Denser rates of reinforcement have proved useful in related human operant research, but the influence of denser rates of S+ production has yet to be evaluated. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate how the absolute S+ production rate influenced sensitivity to relative S+ production rate. Thirty undergraduate students were randomly assigned to three groups for which the absolute rate of S+ production varied but the programmed relative rate of S+ production was held constant across groups. Results similar to those of previous research were obtained with many participants; however, the absolute rate of S+ production exerted no systematic effect on sensitivity or the quality of fits of the generalized matching equation. Exploratory analyses suggest that methods ensuring steady-state responding and improving the predictive value of S+ are important directions for future research.