ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-1

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This paper presents and defends the view that reinforcement and natural selection are selection processes, that selection processes are neither mechanistic nor teleological, and that mentalistic and vitalistic processes are teleological but not mechanistic. The differences between these types of processes are described and used in discussing the conceptual and methodological significance of “selection type theories” and B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorist view that “operant behavior is the field of intention, purpose, and expectation. It deals with that field precisely as the theory of evolution has dealt with another kind of purpose” (1986, p. 716). The antimentalism of radical behaviorism emerges as a post‐Darwinian extension of Francis Bacon's (and Galileo's) influential view that “[the introduction of final causes] rather corrupts than advances the sciences” (Bacon,

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-3

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-16

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

We describe a principle of reinforcement that draws upon experimental analyses of both behavior and the neurosciences. Some of the implications of this principle for the interpretation of behavior are explored using computer simulations of adaptive neural networks. The simulations indicate that a single reinforcement principle, implemented in a biologically plausible neural network, is competent to produce as its cumulative product networks that can mediate a substantial number of the phenomena generated by respondent and operant contingencies. These include acquisition, extinction, reacquisition, conditioned reinforcement, and stimulus‐control phenomena such as blocking and stimulus discrimination. The characteristics of the environment‐behavior relations selected by the action of reinforcement on the connectivity of the network are consistent with behavior‐analytic formulations: Operants are not elicited but, instead, the networkpermitsthem to be guided by the environment. Moreover, the guidance of behavior is context dependent, with the pathways activated by a stimulus determined in part by what other stimuli are acting on the network at that moment. In keeping with a selectionist approach to complexity, the cumulative effects of relatively simple reinforcement processes give promise of simulating the complex behavior of living organisms when acting upon adaptive neural net

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-17

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Using the hippocampal‐slice preparation, we attempted to model operant conditioning in vitro by reinforcing pyramidal cell bursting responses with local micropressure applications of transmitters and drugs. The same injections were administered independently of bursting to provide a “noncontingent” control for direct pharmacological stimulation or facilitation of firing. The results suggested that the bursting responses of individual CA1 pyramidal neurons may be reinforced in a dose‐related manner by response‐contingent (but not noncontingent) injections of dopamine and the selective dopamine D2agonist, N‐0923. N‐0924, a stereoisomer of N‐0923 that is largely devoid of D2‐agonist activity, failed to reinforce CA1 bursting. Burst‐contingent injections of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate also failed to reinforce CA1 bursting; indeed, the glutamate applications (whether contingent or random) reduced the likelihood of bursts while increasing the frequency of solitary spikes. Reinforcement delays exceeding 200 ms largely eliminated the reinforcing efficacy of the D2agonist N‐0437 in CA1 operant conditioning. The results are consistent with the suggestion that the behaviorally reinforcing effects of dopaminergic agents can be modeled in vitro in the hippocam

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-41

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Sexual reinforcers are not part of a regulatory system involved in the maintenance of critical metabolic processes, they differ for males and females, they differ as a function of species and mating system, and they show ontogenetic and seasonal changes related to endocrine conditions. Exposure to a member of the opposite sex without copulation can be sufficient for sexual reinforcement. However, copulatory access is a stronger reinforcer, and copulatory opportunity can serve to enhance the reinforcing efficacy of stimulus features of a sexual partner. Conversely, under certain conditions, noncopulatory exposure serves to decrease reinforcer efficacy. Many common learning phenomena such as acquisition, extinction, discrimination learning, second‐order conditioning, and latent inhibition have been demonstrated in sexual conditioning. These observations extend the generality of findings obtained with more conventional reinforcers, but the mechanisms of these effects and their gender and species specificity remain to be explore

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-55

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

We report a study of the behavior of starlings in laboratory situations inspired by the “prisoner's dilemma.” Our purpose is to investigate some possible mechanisms for the maintenance of cooperation by reciprocity and to investigate the process of autoshaping at a trial‐by‐trial level. In Experiment 1, pairs of starlings housed in adjacent cages played a discrete‐trial “game” in which food could be obtained only by “cooperation.” In this game, pecking at a response key eliminated the opportunity to obtain food but produced food for the partner. If neither bird pecked, neither had the opportunity to obtain food in that trial. Some level of cooperation persisted for several sessions whether the birds had been pretrained for a high or low probability of pecking at the key. The probability of a cooperative response was higher after trials in which the partner responded (and a reward was obtained) than after trials in which neither bird responded (and no reward was obtained), but the probability of a response was even higher after trials in which the same bird had responded, even though no reward was obtained by the actor in these trials. This behavior did not require visual presence of another player, because similar results were obtained in Experiment 2 (a replicate of Experiment 1 in which the members of the pair could not see each other) and in Experiment 3, a game in which each starling played with a computer responding with “tit for tat.” Using an omission schedule, in which food was given in all trials in which the bird did not peck, Experiment 4 showed that pecking could be maintained by autoshaping. In this experiment, overall probability of pecking decreased with experience, due to a drop in the tendency to peck in consecutive trials. The probability of pecking in trials following a reinforced trial did not decrease with experience. An implementation of the Rescorla‐Wagner model for this situation was capable of reproducing molar, but not molecular, aspects of our results. The results violate the predictions of several game‐theoretical models for the evolution of cooperation, including tit for tat, generous tit for tat, and the sup

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-67

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Rats were trained to press a lever in the presence of a tone‐light compound stimulus and not to press in its absence. In each of two experiments, schedules were designed to make the compound a conditioned punisher for one group and a conditioned reinforcer for the other. In Experiment 1, one group's responding produced food in the presence of the compound but not in its absence. The other group's responding terminated the compound stimulus, and food was presented only in its absence. When tone and light were later presented separately, light controlled more responding than did tone in the former group, but tone gained substantial control in the latter. The same effects were also observed within subjects when the training schedules were switched over groups. In Experiment 2, two groups avoided shock in the presence of the compound stimulus. In the absence of the compound, one group was not shocked, and the other received both response‐independent and response‐produced shock. When tone and light were presented separately, the former group's responding was mainly controlled by tone, but the latter group's responding was almost exclusively controlled by light. These effects were also observed within subjects when the training schedules were switched over groups. Thus, these single‐incentive selective association effects (appetitive in Experiment 1 and aversive in Experiment 2) were completely reversible. The schedules in which the compound should have been a conditioned reinforcer consistently produced visual control, and auditory control increased when the compound should have become a conditioned punisher. Currently accepted accounts of selective associations based on affinities between shock and auditory stimuli and between food and visual stimuli (i.e., stimulus‐reinforcer interactions) do not adequately address these results. The contingencies of reinforcement most recently associated with the compound and with its absence, rather than the nature of the reinforcer, determined whether auditory or visual stimulus control

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-85

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Most traditional conceptions of reinforcement are based on a simple causal model in which responding is strengthened by the presentation of a reinforcer. I argue that reinforcement is better viewed as the outcome of constraint of a functioningcausal systemcomprised of multiple interrelated causal sequences, complex linkages between causes and effects, and a set of initial conditions. Using a simplified system conception of the reinforcement situation, I review the similarities and drawbacks of traditional reinforcement models and analyze the recent contributions of cognitive, regulatory, and ecological approaches. Finally, I show how the concept of behavior systems can begin to incorporate both traditional and recent conceptions of reinforcement in an integrative approach.

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-105

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Reinforcement of an instrumental response results not from a special kind of response consequence known as a reinforcer, but from a special kind of schedule known as a response‐deprivation schedule. Under the requirements of a response‐deprivation schedule, the baseline rate of the instrumental response permits less than the baseline rate of the contingent response. Because reinforcement occurs only if the schedule deprives the organism of the contingent response, reinforcement cannot result from any intrinsic property of the contingent response or any property relative to the instrumental response. Two typical effects of response‐deprivation schedules—facilitation of the instrumental response and suppression of the contingent response—are discussed in terms of economic concepts and models of instrumental performance. It is suggested that response deprivation makes the contingent response function as an economic good, the instrumental response as

ISSN:0022-5002    

DOI:10.1901/jeab.1993.60-129

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY