Remembering: The role of extraneous reinforcement

Brown, Glenn S.; White, K. Geoffrey

doi:10.3758/bf03192860

Cited by 13 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 47 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…First, the effects were evident in the steady state, unlike the probe-test results of Wilkie (1984), Blough (1998), and Nevin et al (2003). Second, reinforcers in the alternated component occurred outside the constant-component VI DMTS trials and thus were temporally distant from DMTS trials, unlike the reinforcers arranged by Wilkie, Blough, and Brown and White (2005c).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Thus, the results of Experiment 2 support the model, whereas those of Experiment 1 do not. It is not immediately obvious how the model can be adapted to account for that difference in outcomes, or for the various results reported by Wilkie (1984), Blough (1998), and Brown and White (2005c) with different procedures. Future research may identify those circumstances under which reinforcers that are extraneous to a discrimination task do or do not affect the accuracy of performance and thereby help to identify the mechanisms underlying the effects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Contrast effects in response rate and accuracy of delayed matching to sample

Nevin

Shahan

Odum

2008

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Behavioural contrast is an inverse relation between the response rate in one component of a multiple schedule and the reinforcer rate in an alternated component. To explore possible contrast effects in accuracy as well as response rate, four pigeons were trained in multiple schedules where key pecking produced delayed matching-to-sample trials on a variable-interval schedule. Reinforcer probability for correct matches was constant at .3 in one component, and the conditions of reinforcement were varied in the second component. In Experiment 1, the varied component arranged the same contingencies as the constant component but with reinforcer probabilities of .9 or .1 across conditions. In the varied component, both response rate and accuracy of delayed matching were directly related to reinforcer probability; in the constant component, however, contrast effects on response rate were weak, and there was no evidence of contrast in accuracy of matching. In Experiment 2, the varied component was either variable interval with immediate food reinforcement or extinction. Reliable contrast effects were obtained in both response rate and in accuracy of matching in the constant component, and their magnitudes were correlated within and between subjects. The results of Experiment 2 join previous findings of covariation in the effects of reinforcement on free-operant responding and accuracy of discrimination.Short-term remembering in nonhuman animals has been studied extensively in the delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) paradigm. A standard example employs pigeons as subjects with blue or yellow sample stimuli presented on a centre key. After centre-key offset and a retention interval, blue and yellow comparisons are presented on the side keys, and reinforcement is available for responses to the comparison that matches the colour of the sample. The basic dependent variable is the relation between accuracy and retention-interval length known as the forgetting function.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrast effects in response rate and accuracy of delayed matching to sample

Nevin

Shahan

Odum

2008

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For the present model, we assume that other behaviors extraneous to the task of remembering occur throughout the retention interval, whatever they are, and that they are rewarded by extraneous or other reinforcers, R o , following Herrnstein's (1970) supposition of extraneous reinforcement. In general, R o is a hypothetical entity, although it could be supplemented by experimenter-defined extraneous reinforcement, as Brown and White (2005b) …”

Section: Reinforcement Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If the reduction in discriminability with increasing retention interval duration results from competition between reinforcers for completing the memory task and reinforcers for alternative or other behaviors, R o , then a reduction in the probability of reward for the memory task will result in a relatively greater influence of R o and, accordingly, a greater increase in the rate of forgetting. The rationale above was applied more specifically by Brown and White (2005b) to a delayed matching-to-sample task with pigeons, in which an extraneous task was interpolated in the retention interval. The extraneous task involved pecking the center key, with pecks rewarded according to variable interval (VI) schedules of VI 15 or VI 30 s, or not at all (Extinction or EXT).…”

Section: Differing In Slopementioning

confidence: 99%

Forgetting from Short-Term Memory in Delayed Matching to Sample: A Reinforcement Context Model

White¹,

Brown²

2014

CCBR

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Short-term memory in nonhuman animals is typically studied in delayed matching to sample, with variation in the retention interval or delay between the to-be-remembered sample and subsequently presented choice or comparison stimuli. The forgetting function, which relates the systematic decrease in discriminability to increasing delay, is well described by an exponential in the square root of time, with an intercept and slope that vary systematically with different conditions, such as sample-stimulus disparity, retention-interval conditions, and reward parameters. We argue that the rewards for accurate matching are relative to the reinforcement context, which includes rewards R o for extraneous or other behaviors. Forgetting results from competition between R o and rewards for the delayed matching task. We suggest that R o acts to shift attention from the memory task to extraneous behavior, and that R o grows as a linear function of time in the retention interval. By incorporating these assumptions in the model proposed by White and Wixted (1999), we accurately predict the time course of forgetting under a variety of different conditions for delayed matching.

show abstract

“…In a conditional discrimination, in particular, the discriminated operant is a behavioral unit, subject to reinforcement in the same way that a simple operant is. Here, we argue that remembering in delayed matching to sample (DMTS), also a conditional discrimination, can be treated as a discriminated operant in which the relation between the sample stimulus and a choice response is a behavioral unit (Brown & White, 2005b;Sargisson & White, 2001;White, 2002).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%