Superimposition of Response‐independent Reinforcement

Burgess, Ian S.; Wearden, J. H.

doi:10.1901/jeab.1986.45-75

Cited by 28 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…To the extent that response-dependent and response-independent food presentations are detected as distinct, they may control responding differentially through a discriminative, as distinct from a reinforcement, process. For example, Burgess and Wearden (1986) proposed a model for de- scribing the effects of intruded response-independent food that relies heavily on quantifying the discriminative properties of the response-reinforcer relation. The difficulty with the model is that it does not suggest an index of the discrimination that is independent of response rates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response‐independent Events in the Behavior Stream

Lattal

Abreu‐Rodrigues

1997

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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The metaphor of the behavior stream provides a framework for studying the effects of responseindependent food presentations intruded into an environment in which operant responding of pigeons was maintained by variable-interval schedules. In the first two experiments, response rates were reduced when response-independent food was intruded during the variable-interval schedule according to a concomitantly present fixed-time schedule. These reductions were not always an orderly function of the percentage of response-dependent food. Negatively accelerated patterns of key pecking across the fixed-time period occurred in Experiment 1 under the concomitant fixedtime variable-interval schedules. In Experiment 2, positively and negatively accelerated and linear response patterns occurred even though the schedules were similar to those used in Experiment 1. The variable findings in the first two experiments led to three subsequent experiments that were designed to further illuminate the controlling variables of the effects of intruded response-independent events. When the fixed and variable schedules were correlated with distinct operanda by employing a concurrent fixed-interval variable-interval schedule (Experiment 3) or with distinct discriminative stimuli (Experiments 4 and 5), negatively accelerated response patterns were obtained. Even in these latter cases, however, the response patterns were a joint function of the physical separation of the two schedules and the ratio of fixed-time or fixed-interval to variable-interval schedule food presentations. The results of the five experiments are discussed in terms of the contributions of both reinforcement variables and discriminative stimuli in determining the effects of intruding response-independent food into a stream of operant behavior.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response‐independent Events in the Behavior Stream

Lattal

Abreu‐Rodrigues

1997

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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“…Experimentally, the illusion of control effect appears to be found when the rate at which outcomes are delivered, and the rate at which responses are emitted, are high (Blanco, Matute, & Vadillo, 2012;Rudski, 2004). A similar finding has also been observed in the nonhuman instrumental conditioning literature, and is often termed Bsuperstitious conditioning.Â lthough the presentation of response-independent reinforcers typically depresses responding (Burgess & Wearden, 1986), presenting response-independent reinforcement can sometimes result in higher rates of instrumental responding (Lattal & Bryan, 1976;Rudski, Lischner, & Albert, 1999;Skinner, 1948). This is particularly noted when rates of response-dependent reinforcement are low (Lattal & Bryan, 1976).…”

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confidence: 99%

Response-independent outcomes impact response rates and judgments of control differentially depending on rate of response-dependent outcomes

Reed

2015

Learn Behav

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Two experiments examined the impact of responseindependent outcome delivery on human rates of response and judgments of control in an instrumental conditioning task. In Experiment 1, when participants responded on a schedule with a relatively high probability of a response producing an outcome, a random ratio (RR-5), judgments of control declined as rates of response-independent outcomes increased. However, when response-dependent outcomes were delivered with a relatively low probability (RR-15), increasing the rate of response-independent outcomes increased rates of response and judgments of control. Experiment 2 replicated this effect, but also noted a differential effect of response-independent outcome and response-independent sensory presentations on response rate and judgments of causal effectiveness. Ratings of the context in which the conditioning occurred suggested these were correlated with total outcome presentation, and that the role of context on response rate and judgments of control may be important to consider.Keywords Judgment of control . Response rate . Response-independent outcomes . Context conditioning . Humans Understanding the conditions impacting judgments of control is important across a range of areas: basic cognitive functioning (Allan, 1993;Cheng, 1997;Einhorn & Hogarth, 1986;Nevin & Grace, 2000), applications in psychopathologies (Alloy & Abramson, 1979;Blanco, Matute, & Vadillo, 2012), development of therapies (Dimidjian, Barrera, Martell, Muñoz, & Lewinsohn, 2011;Koller & Kaplan, 1978), as well as in social (Crocker, 1981) and economic (Fenton-O'Creevy, Nicholson, Soane, & Willman, 2003;Reed, 1999) psychology. The circumstances under which the causal structure of the environment can be understood are also thought to be important across species (Alloy & Tabachnik, 1984;Wasserman, 1990). The latter suggestion has prompted a range of studies using procedures that are analogous to classical (Blanco, Matute, & Vadillo, 2011;Miller & Matute, 1996a) and instrumental (Reed, 1999(Reed, , 2001aWasserman, Chatlosh, & Neunaber, 1983) conditioning to explore the factors implicated in developing judgments of causation. Although these procedures do not employ Bbiologically^rel-evant stimuli (like food), they share procedural similarities with conditioning studies in which a response or stimuli is presented prior to an outcome.The similarity of findings between causal reasoning and learning studies depends on a wide number of factors (Miller & Matute, 1996b), including whether the task requires the individual to gain outcomes or assess the response-outcome relationships (Matute, 1996;Reed, 2001a). In fact, different processes operate when the outcome is hedonically or biologically neutral, as in most tasks of causal reasoning (Blanco et al., 2011), and when the outcome has some hedonic (Reed, 1994) or biological (Miller & Matute, 1996b) significance. The current series of experiments focuses on exploring causal judgments in a task retaining significant components of an instrumental condit...

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“…The independent and dependent variables and subscripts are the same as in Equation Burgess and Wearden (1986), Vaughan and Herrnstein (1987), and Wearden (1983). Support for Equation 2 as an effective concurrent-schedule model was provided by Alsop and Davison (1992).…”

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confidence: 99%

Effects of the Discriminability of Alternatives in Three‐alternative Concurrent‐schedule Performance

Davison

McCarthy

1994

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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Six pigeons were trained on two-and three-alternative concurrent schedules in which the alternatives were signaled by different wavelengths of light on the main pecking key. The schedules were arranged according to a switching-key procedure in which pecks on a white side key produced a 3-s blackout and, intermittently, a change in the variable-interval schedule of food programmed on the main (center) key after the blackout. In Part 1, a two-alternative concurrent variable-interval schedule was arranged in which the alternatives were signaled by 560 nm and 630 nm. Parts 2 and 3 arranged threealternative concurrent variable-interval schedules with the alternatives signaled by 560 nm, 600 nm, and 630 nm (Part 2) and 560 nm, 623 nm, and 630 nm (Part 3). Within each part, the relative rate of food reinforcers available on the alternatives was varied across a wide range. In all parts of the experiment, the ratios of responses emitted between pairs of alternatives were more extreme than the ratios of reinforcers obtained on the pairs of alternatives, a result termed overmatching. In Parts 2 and 3, generalized matching sensitivities between pairs of alternatives were found to be higher when the reinforcer rate on the third alternative was low than when it was high-an apparent failure of the constant-ratio rule. The data were well described by an extension of the Davison and Jenkins (1985) model, which assumes differing discriminabilities between concurrent-schedule alternatives in combination with a punishing effect of blackout following changeovers.

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Superimposition of Response‐independent Reinforcement

Cited by 28 publications

References 16 publications

Response‐independent Events in the Behavior Stream

Response‐independent Events in the Behavior Stream

Response-independent outcomes impact response rates and judgments of control differentially depending on rate of response-dependent outcomes

Effects of the Discriminability of Alternatives in Three‐alternative Concurrent‐schedule Performance

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