摘要:

Pigeons were trained under a discrete‐trials detection procedure in which one of a set of color stimuli was presented on the center key and a single response turned off the stimulus and illuminated two side keys. Single responses to one or the other side key produced occasional reinforcers depending on the value of the color stimulus. In Experiment 1, one color‐stimulus set comprised 559, 564, 569, and 574 nm, and right‐key pecks were occasionally reinforced following presentations of members of this set. The other stimulus set comprised 579, 584, 589, and 594 nm, and left‐key pecks were occasionally reinforced following presentations of members of this set. Across seven experimental conditions, the left/(left + right) relative reinforcer frequency was varied from .1 to .9. In Experiment 2, one stimulus set contained only one member, 574 nm, and right‐key responses were occasionally reinforced following its presentation. Over 12 experimental conditions, two manipulations were carried out. First, the number of stimuli comprising the other stimulus set was increased from one (579 nm) to two (579 and 584 nm) to three (579, 584, and 589 nm) and to four (579, 584, 589, and 594 nm), and left‐key responses were reinforced occasionally following center‐key presentations of members of this set. Second, for each stimulus combination, the left/(left + right) relative reinforcer frequency was varied from .1 to .5 to .9 across three experimental conditions. The principal finding of Experiments 1 and 2 was that reinforcers and stimuli interacted in their effects on behavior. In Experiment 3, pairs of adjacent stimuli (5 nm apart) in the range 559 to 594 nm were presented in each experimental condition, and the left/(left + right) relative reinforcer frequency was held constant at .5. The data from all three experiments were analyzed according to a detection model describing performance in multiple‐stimulus two‐response procedures. This model provided independent measures of stimulus discriminability, contingency discriminability, and bias. The analysis showed that (a) consistent with the color‐naming function, pigeons were better able to discriminate between higher nanometer values than lower nanometer values; (b) their ability to discriminate between the stimuli was independent of the number of wavelengths comprising each stimulus set; (c) they allocated delivered reinforcers very accurately to the previously emitted response; and (d) no consis

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-291

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The effects of four doses of chlorpromazine (dose range 0.5 to 12.5 mg/kg) on performance under a delayed matching‐to‐sample procedure in pigeons was investigated, using the exponential model of memory (White, 1985). Performance was measured using a bias‐free measure of discriminability, logd(Davison&Tustin, 1978), and negative exponential functions were fitted to individual‐subject and group data at each dose level. A decrease in matching accuracy was found to be caused by an increase in the rate of forgetting,b, and a decrease in the initial discriminability, logdo. Changes in rate of forgetting and discriminability occurred at doses that had no statistically significant effect on response latency. The exponential model of memory accounted well for the data and provided a useful way of quantifying the effects of chlorpromazine on the processes involved in delayed matching‐to‐sample

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-317

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Pigeons' key pecks were reinforced according to concurrent‐chains schedules of reinforcement. The programmed average time from the onset of the initial links to a terminal link entry was held constant across conditions while the value of variable‐interval schedules in the terminal links was varied. Performance was assessed under two economic conditions: (a) an open economy in which session duration was limited to 1 hr and subjects were maintained at 80% of their free‐feeding body weights with postsession food when necessary; and (b) a closed economy in which sessions were 23.5 hr long and no deprivation regimen was in effect. In all cases, the relative rate of responding in the initial links matched the reduction in overall delay to primary reinforcement correlated with entry into one terminal link relative to the reduction in delay correlated with entry into the other terminal link. Although the sum of responses made in the initial links and terminal links was found to increase, then decrease, as the rate of food presentation decreased in the closed economy, there was no consistent effect of overall rate of food presentation on total responding in the open economy. The choice data suggest that relative delay reduction predicts choice accurately, regardless of economic co

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-329

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Choice behavior in college students was examined in two experiments using the concurrent‐chains procedure. In both experiments, the concurrent chains were presented on a microcomputer in the form of an air‐defense game in which subjects used two radar systems to detect and subsequently destroy enemy aircraft. Access to one of two radar systems was controlled by a pair of independent concurrent variable‐interval 60‐s schedules with a 4‐s changeover delay always in effect. In the terminal link, the appearance of an enemy aircraft was determined by a pair of differentially segmented fixed‐time schedules (Experiment 1) or fixed‐interval schedules (Experiment 2) of equal overall duration. In Experiment 1, the terminal‐link duration was either 20 s or 40 s, and subjects preferred the unsegmented to the segmented intervals. In Experiment 2, the duration was either 10 s or 60 s, and the reinforcement contingencies required responding during the terminal link. Prior to the reinstatement of the initial link, subjects estimated the duration of the terminal‐link schedule. Segmentation affected choice in the 60‐s conditions but not in the 10‐s ones. Preference for the unsegmented schedule was correlated with an overestimation of the durations for the segmented schedules. These results replicated those found in animal experiments and support the notion of increasing the psychological distance to reward by segmenting a time‐based sc

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-343

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This study reports the results of an experiment with 4 female 5‐year‐old children, in which the verbal behavior of the children (talking to themselves) was studied under two conditions—an anthropomorphic toy condition and a nonanthropomorphic toy condition. The anthropomorphic condition consisted of three‐dimensional toys such as dolls, stuffed animals, and figurines. The nonanthropomorphic toy condition consisted of two‐dimensional materials such as puzzles, coloring books, and story books. The independent variables were the toy conditions. The dependent variables were verbal‐behavior units; these included mands, tacts, intraverbals, autoclitics, and conversational units. The conditions were compared using a multiple schedule design. The results showed that more total units occurred in the anthropomorphic toy condition than in the nonanthropomorphic toy condition and that conversational units occurred in the anthropomorphic condition only. Consistent with Skinner's (1957) hypothesis, the children acted as both speaker and listener when emitting verbal behavior to themselves in the anthropomorphi

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-353

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Four boys and 4 girls (3 to 5 years old) played with as many as three toys chosen from a set of six, and were then asked whether they played with each of the toys. After a baseline in which all children showed high levels of correspondence between reported and actual behavior, reports of play were differentially reinforced, first in an individual and then in a social context. Two children in the individual condition began to report play with all six toys, even though no more than three toys had been played with. When reports of play were reinforced in a group context, 5 children reported play with all six toys. When correspondence was subsequently reinforced, virtually complete correspondence returned and was maintained in a third noncontingent reinforcement condition. Correspondence and lack of correspondence were discussed in terms of self‐tacting and distorted tacting or mandin

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-361

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

In a conditional discrimination, 6 college students arranged six Cyrillic letters into groups of three based upon which of two additional Cyrillic letters (contextual stimuli) was present. All subjects demonstrated symmetry and transitivity within each class of equivalent stimuli. In a second conditional discrimination, two more Cyrillic letters were related to each contextual stimulus. Testing of symmetrical and transitive relations between the original contextual stimulus and the two new ones confirmed the development of two three‐member classes of contextual stimuli. Subsequent tests demonstrated that the new contextual stimuli controlled the previously trained sample‐comparison relations for all subje

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-369

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Using a matching‐to‐sample procedure, McIntire, Cleary, and Thompson (1987) taught monkeys the conditional relations A1‐R1‐A1‐R1, A2‐R2‐A2‐R2, A1‐R1‐B1‐R1, A2‐R2‐B2‐R2, B1‐R1‐C1‐R1, and B2‐R2‐C2‐R2, where the first and third terms in each relation refer to the sample and comparison stimuli, respectively, and the second and last terms refer to the emission of a distinctive pattern of responding. The subjects were then tested for the emergent relations A‐C, C‐A, B‐A, C‐B, and B‐B, with the differential response produced by a given stimulus during training also emitted on test trials (e.g., A1‐R1‐C1‐R1). The performances of both subjects were as accurate on the tested relations as they had been on the trained relations. The new relations were characterized as demonstrations of stimulus equivalence. However, the conditional discrimination literature shows that such training procedures generate control of comparison selection by the differential response patterns. Therefore, no emergent relations were demonstrated because all of the trained response‐stimulus relations were preserved on test trials. This paper suggests that these procedures do not provide an appropriate analogy for the kind of emergent stimulus‐stimulus relations exhibited by human subjects in equivalence studies and outlines a paradigm for assessing the relative inf

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-379

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Recently, two published articles have reported finding stimulus equivalence in nonhumans. One suggested that equivalence was due to the mediation of names. The procedure used trained all components of all tested relations. Because nothing was derived, the defining characteristics of equivalence were not achieved. In the second study a definition of equivalence was proposed that fails to distinguish functional stimulus classes from equivalence classes. The resulting data are not clearly relevant to stimulus equivalence in Sidman's sense of the term. Stimulus equivalence has not yet been shown in nonhumans.

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-385

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-393

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY