Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior最新文献

The persistence of operant behavior when disrupted tends to be positively related to how often reinforcers were delivered in the past. Behavioral momentum theory describes this finding as the outcome of Pavlovian processes. That is, the relation between discriminative stimuli and reinforcers that were delivered in their presence strengthens behavior, thereby making it more likely to persist. If only the story were that simple. A growing number of findings challenge the basic tenets of behavioral momentum theory. Some even call into question whether Pavlovian relations contribute to persistence in the first place. In this paper, I will review behavioral momentum theory and some of the data that have been problematic for the theory. I will argue that despite these very real challenges, the theory provides important utility not only to basic analyses of response persistence but also to clinical interventions directed at long-term reductions in problem behavior. It, for example, has set the stage for the development of alternative conceptual analyses of resistance to change, two of which will be highlighted for readers. Moreover, behavioral momentum theory may tell us something important about the reasons it continues to have an influence on the field, despite the challenging data that deter it.

Caregiver adherence to treatment plans is likely maintained by negative reinforcement and can contact extinction when child responding relapses. When caregiver adherence contacts extinction, caregiver nonadherence, such as reinforcing their child's challenging behavior, relapses, threatening treatment efficacy. Previous laboratory models demonstrating the relapse of caregiver nonadherence only evaluated treatment for behavior maintained by social-positive reinforcement, not that maintained by social-negative reinforcement. These models only measured caregiver nonadherence as discrete events, which cannot capture the magnitude of each error. The present study was an evaluation of the relapse of caregiver nonadherence during simulated treatments for escape-maintained challenging behavior. First, caregivers placed demands in a home-like setting and a research confederate responded to these demands in a manner mimicking clinical clients. Next, caregivers were taught to implement treatment in a clinical setting and the confederate's behavior gradually improved. Last, caregivers returned to the home-like setting and confederate challenging behavior relapsed. Nonadherence relapsed for all caregivers, demonstrating the need for additional research on methods for mitigating caregiver relapse during treatment of children's challenging behavior and the usefulness of the proposed measurement system for future research.

In separate chambers, responding by two pairs of pigeons was reinforced under concurrent random-ratio schedules of reinforcement. For each pair, the birds' schedules were coupled in such a manner that left- and right-key reinforcement probabilities were determined by the key being pecked by the other pigeon of the pair. In this way, a reinforcement matrix, like that of the popular Prisoner's Dilemma game of game theory, was created. The responding of all subjects soon gravitated to the choice combination identified by the mathematician John Nash as the equilibrium of the Prisoner's Dilemma game. This was found both before and after reversal of contingencies on the keys. In a second experiment, with a single pair of pigeons, stimuli signaling the choice of the paired pigeon had little lasting effect: responding again gravitated to the game's equilibrium. The results affirm earlier findings, demonstrating that Skinner's principle of positive reinforcement, together with Nashian mathematics, entirely accounts for iterative game-theoretic behavior. They extend these findings to the so-called free operant: to schedules of reinforcement in which responding is not constrained by stimulus–response sequencing (i.e., a trials procedure). The coupled schedule of reinforcement introduced here offers significant promise for the experimental analysis of economic and social behaviors.

Over the last 3 decades, the use and popularity of canid models for basic and applied behavioral research has grown dramatically, and for good reasons. Dogs are uniquely among the human world, living and working in our homes and places of employment while an even greater population lives on the outskirts of human life, scavenging and navigating the city life. This provides a rich continuum of environmental contexts for the canine experience, leading to some unique and even human-like behaviors in animals. The articles in this special issue provide additional insight into factors that influence canine welfare, methods for evaluating dogs' preferences and the reinforcing effectiveness of stimuli, trick learning and retention, concept learning, and scent detection performance under sparse reinforcement conditions. Here we provide an overview of these articles and their contribution to our understanding of canine behavior.

Resurgence of previously reinforced behavior represents a challenge to otherwise successful interventions based on differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA). Expanded-operant treatments seek to increase the number of functional alternative behaviors through DRA, thereby potentially mitigating resurgence. However, the few studies that have directly examined these methods as a tool for resurgence mitigation have provided limited and unclear results. Thus, the present experiments were designed to investigate the effect of expanded-operant DRA methods on resurgence of previously reinforced behavior using rat subjects. In two experiments, following a baseline phase in which a target response was trained, groups of rats experienced concurrent (i.e., five simultaneous alternative responses), serial (i.e., five sequentially available alternative responses), or single DRA interventions arranging similar rates of alternative reinforcement in order to examine potential differences in resurgence. Both experiments showed that neither serial nor concurrent DRA expanded-operant treatments reduced resurgence compared with single DRA regardless of whether stimuli associated with previously reinforced alternative responses were removed (Experiment 1) or remained present (Experiment 2) for the serial-DRA group. Further, a primacy effect in resurgence was obtained for the serial-DRA group in both experiments. Overall, these results suggest that expanded-operant treatments may not help to reduce resurgence.

While trying to infer laws of behavior, accounting for both within-subjects and between-subjects variance is often overlooked. It has been advocated recently to use multilevel modeling to analyze matching behavior. Using multilevel modeling within behavior analysis has its own challenges though. Adequate sample sizes are required (at both levels) for unbiased parameter estimates. The purpose of the current study is to compare parameter recovery and hypothesis rejection rates of maximum likelihood (ML) estimation and Bayesian estimation (BE) of multilevel models for matching behavior studies. Four factors were investigated through simulations: number of subjects, number of measurements by subject, sensitivity (slope), and variance of the random effect. Results showed that both ML estimation and BE with flat priors yielded acceptable statistical properties for intercept and slope fixed effects. The ML estimation procedure generally had less bias, lower RMSE, more power, and false-positive rates closer to the nominal rate. Thus, we recommend ML estimation over BE with uninformative priors, considering our results. The BE procedure requires more informative priors to be used in multilevel modeling of matching behavior, which will require further studies.

The rate of delay discounting exhibited by individuals has been experimentally altered by manipulating the way in which time is described, a specific application of the framing effect. Previous research suggests that using specific dates to describe delays tends to lower temporal discounting and change the shape of the discounting function. The main purpose of this study was to assess the influence of framing on discounting in different temporal contexts. Participants chose between hypothetical monetary gains (gains group), or between hypothetical monetary losses (losses group). Each group completed eight discounting tasks over two sessions (two choice tasks [SmallNow/SmallSoon] by two time frames [dates/calendar units] by two magnitudes. The results indicate that Mazur's model adequately described the observed discounting functions in most conditions. However, the decrease in discounting rate when both consequences were delayed only occurred when calendar units (but not dates) were used for both gains and losses. These findings suggest that framing affects the influence of a shared delay instead of changing the shape of the discounting function. Our results support the idea that time influences behavior similarly in humans and nonhumans when they choose between two delayed consequences.

Steep delay and shallow probability discounting are associated with myriad problem behaviors; thus, it is important to understand factors that influence the degree of discounting. The present study evaluated the effects of economic context and reward amount on delay and probability discounting. Two hundred thirteen undergraduate psychology students completed four delay- or probability-discounting tasks. Participants were exposed to hypothetical narratives involving four bank amounts ($750, $12,000, $125,000, and $2,000,000). The delayed/probabilistic amount was $3,000 for the two smaller bank amounts and $500,000 for the two larger bank amounts. The discounting tasks included five delays to, or probabilities of, receipt of the larger amount. The area under the empirical discounting function was calculated for each participant. Participants discounted delayed and uncertain outcomes more when the bank amount was smaller than the outcome (i.e., the economic context was low). Participants discounted the delayed larger amounts less than delayed smaller amounts, even when the relative economic context was the same. In contrast, probability discounting did not differ across magnitudes, which suggests that economic context may attenuate the magnitude effect in probability discounting. The results further highlight the importance of considering the economic context in delay and probability discounting.

This review sought to synthesize the literature on the reliability and validity of behavioral-economic measures of demand and discounting in human research, introduce behavioral-economic research methodologies for studying addictive behaviors, discuss gaps in the current literature, and review areas for future research. A total of 34 studies was included in this review. The discounting literature showed similar responding regardless of whether hypothetical or actual outcomes were used, though people tended to discount the outcome presented first more steeply, suggesting order effects. Although delay-discounting measures seem to show temporal stability, exceptions were found for probability- and experiential-discounting tasks. The demand literature also demonstrated similar responding regardless of outcome type; however, some demand indices showed exceptions. Randomized price sequences tended to show modest increases in O_max and α and modestly higher rates of inconsistent or nonsystematic responses compared with sequential price sequences. Demand indices generally showed temporal stability, although the stability was weaker the larger the time interval between test sessions. Future studies would benefit by examining addictive commodities beyond alcohol, nicotine, and money; examining temporal stability over longer time intervals; using larger delays in discounting tasks; and using larger sample sizes.