Revisiting conjugate schedules

Abstract

The effects of conjugate reinforcement on the responding of 13 college students were examined in three experiments. Conjugate reinforcement was provided via key presses that changed the clarity of pictures displayed on a computer monitor in a manner proportional to the rate of responding. Experiment 1, which included seven parameters of clarity change per response, revealed that responding decreased as the percentage clarity per response increased for all five participants. These results indicate that each participant's responding was sensitive to intensity change, which is a parameter of conjugate reinforcement schedules. Experiment 2 showed that responding increased during conjugate reinforcement phases and decreased during extinction phases for all four participants. Experiment 3 also showed that responding increased during conjugate reinforcement and further showed that responding decreased during a conjugate negative punishment condition for another four participants. Directions for future research with conjugate schedules are briefly discussed.

An evaluation of synchronous reinforcement for increasing on‐task behavior in preschool children

“…One type of schedule of covariation is the conjugate-reinforcement schedule in which the rate, amplitude, or intensity of behavior directly controls some aspect of reinforcement (e.g., magnitude, intensity, or amplitude of reinforcement) on a moment-to-moment basis (Lewis, 1973;Lindsley, 1962;MacAleese, Ghezzi, & Rapp, 2015;Rapp, 2008). More specifically, the reinforcing consequences continuously covary in proportion to changes in the behavior (Rovee-Collier & Gekoski, 1979).…”

“…In summary, previous research has used schedules of covariation to study various phenomena; however, few studies have evaluated the utility of these schedules for changing socially important behavior across populations, behaviors, and contexts. Furthermore, few studies, with the exception of a couple basic research studies (e.g., MacAleese et al, 2015;Williams & Johnston, 1992), have studied the schedules in their own right. Thus, little is known about the conditions under which they might be more or less useful and the mechanism by which they result in behavior change.…”

Comparing stimulus preference and response force in a conjugate preparation

“…Everyday examples of conjugate schedules abound, such as the relation between steering and movement of a car, wherein wheel turning produces an immediate change in physical movement (and visual stimulation) in a specific direction, the maintenance of constant bearing in catching a target or prey item, wherein subtle physical movements are immediately reinforced by maintaining or improving the view of the target, and the rate of pressing buttons to change channels on a remote control, wherein discrete responses immediately alter visual stimulation, auditory stimulation, or both. Since Rapp (2008) lamented the field's neglect of conjugate schedules and its potential translational value, both applied (Deochand et al, 2020;Diaz de Villegas et al, 2020) and basic preparations (Falligant et al, 2018(Falligant et al, , 2020MacAleese et al, 2015) have emerged for various conjugate schedules.…”

“…Conjugate schedules may be viewed as a limiting case of differential outcomes where there are moment-to-moment adjustments in reinforcer-response dimensions. MacAleese et al (2015) noted most early work on conjugate schedules had focused on direct application, and relatively few studies had examined these schedules in their own right. MacAleese et al conducted a series of translational experiments on conjugate schedules to document reinforcement and punishment processes.…”

“…In addition to its application for assessing stimulus preference, the documentation of such effects would be important to the field generally. The purpose of this investigation was to extend MacAleese et al (2015) for conjugate viewing of stimuli and Falligant et al (2018) for measuring response force. Specifically, we determined the correspondence between participants' rankings produced by a brief preference assessment for visual stimulus categories to the response force participants exerted to view pictures in each stimulus category.…”