Reinforcement in Human Learning

Contributions of stimulus-incentive and stimulus-response-incentive contingencies to response acquisition and maintenance

“…The evidence for the sufficiency of S:IS contingencies for producing or influencing instrumental responses comes most clearly from studies of autoshaping (e.g., Brown & Jenkins, 1968;Gamzu & Schwartz, 1973;Gamzu & Williams, 1971;Locurto, Terrace, & Gibbon, 1976;Stiers & Silberberg, 1974;Wasserman, 1973Wasserman, , 1975 Williams & Williams, 1969;Woodruff, Conner, Gamzu, & Williams, 1977). The theoretical schemes that have been proposed to accommodate the fmdings of these studies range from those that attribute important roles to both S:IS and R:IS contingencies (e.g., Bolles, 1972;Estes, 1969Estes, , 1972Hearst & Jenkins, 1974;Schwartz & Gamzu, 1977;Walker, 1969) to those that try to make the S:IS contingency the most important, if not the sole, basis of the observed learned modifications (e.g., Bindra, 1972Bindra, , 1974Bindra, , 1976Lajoie & Bindra, 1976;Moore, 1973). However, little progress has been made so far toward experimentally understanding the relative roles of the two contingencies in the acquisition or performance of different types of responses.…”

Transfer following two-choice differential reward learning in children

“…This transfer behavior can readily be interpreted in terms of a cognitive or informational theory of reward (Atkinson & Wickens, 1971;Estes, 1969;Nuttin & Greenwald, 1968). It is assumed that S acquires information regarding the relations between each of the stimuli and its assigned reward and then adjusts his choices to conform to his state of information in both training and transfer situations.…”

Reinforcement in children: Received and expected

“…Although a previous reinforcement undoubtedly served to maintain the subsequent informational value of the signal, responding was directly co nt rolled by the signal rather than by the previous reinforcement. This effect of reward expectation has also been observed in the response speed of monkeys (Medin & Davis, 1972) and in the choice behavior of adult human be ings (Estes, 1972) .…”