THE CORRELATION‐BASED LAW OF EFFECT¹

Abstract

It is commonly understood that the interactions between an organism and its environment constitute a feedback system. This implies that instrumental behavior should be viewed as a continuous exchange between the organism and the environment. It follows that orderly relations between behavior and environment should emerge at the level of aggregate flow in time, rather than momentary events. These notions require a simple, but fundamental, change in the law of effect: from a law based on contiguity of events to a law based on correlation between events. Much recent research and argument favors such a change. If the correlation-based law of effect is accepted, it favors measures and units of analysis that transcend momentary events, extending through time. One can measure all consequences on a common scale, called value. One can define a unit of analysis called the behavioral situation, which circumscribes a set of values. These concepts allow redefinition of reinforcement and punishment, and clarification of their relation to discriminative stimuli.

Sensitivity to molar feedback functions: A test of molar optimality theory.

“…This question implies that the feedback mechanisms responsible for maintaining steady-state behavior and those responsible for learning the schedule contingencies are different. Molar feedback functions were originally proposed to describe the feedback between the organism and the environment during both acquisition and steady-state performance (Baum, 1973). However, molar rates a p peared to be the most appropriate measure for the feedback relation for maintaining behavior on schedules, while few, if any, believed that animals depend on these molar rates (over entire sessions) during acquisition.…”

The Place of the Human Subject in the Operant Laboratory

“…Although the behavior of the psychotics had much in common with that of normals (and with infrahumans) under standard laboratory conditions, the focus was on the differences. The (Baum, 1973), systematic differences between the concurrent performances of users and nonusers might clarify theoretical accounts of drug use in terms of reinforcement processes.…”

Effect of Unsignaled Delay to Reinforcement on Within-Session Responding

“…Explanations that posit that delayed reinforcement influences responding by changing the contiguity of (see Schneider, 1990) or the correlation between the response and the reinforcer (Baum, 1973) would seem to overlook the fact that responding changes systematically within the session. That is, these are molar theories and are silent as to why responding changes within the session when the response-reinforcer contiguity or correlation remains constant within the session.…”

“…Potential explanations for the decreases in response rate include decreases in · reinforcer value because the reinforcer is delayed (cf. Williams, 1976), decreases in the temporal contiguity between the response and the delivery of the reinforcer (see Schneider, 1990, for a review), decreases in the correlation between responding and reinforcement (Baum, 1973), and increases in competition between operant and observing behavior (e.g., checking the feeder; Schaal, Shahan, Kovera, & Reilly, 1998). Determining whether different withinsession patterns of responding are observed at different delays to reinforcement could potentially help to delineate between these theories because, while some of these theories could potentially be reconciled with such results, others would appear to be unable to explain such changes in response patterns.…”