The free food (contrafreeloading) phenomenon: A review and analysis

Osborne, Steve R.

doi:10.3758/bf03209232

Cited by 205 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 109 publications

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“…This paradox disappears, however, once the role of conditioned reinforcement is appreciated. As shown by several different investigators (see Osborne, 1977), the critical ingredient appears to be the stimulus change contingent on the operant behavior that does not occur during the procurement ofthe free food itself. When the stimulus change is equated for the two sources of food, preference for free food quickly develops.…”

Section: Practical Uses Of Conditioned Reinforcementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, animals will learn, without prior shaping, to produce the operant response even when the free food is available from the onset of training (Neuringer, 1969). Such behavior has been observed with several different species, different schedules ofreinforcement, and reinforcers other than food (see Osborne, 1977, for a review). The behavior appears paradoxical because it violates the law of least effort, which has been otherwise upheld in many different settings.…”

Section: Practical Uses Of Conditioned Reinforcementmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Conditioned Reinforcement: Experimental and Theoretical Issues

1994

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The concept of conditioned reinforcement has received decreased attention in learning textbooks over the past decade, in part because of criticisms of its validity by major behavior theorists and in part because its explanatory function in a variety of different conditioning procedures has become uncertain. Critical data from the major procedures that have been used to investigate the concept (second-order schedules, chain schedules, concurrent chains, observing responses, delay-of-reinforcement procedures) are reviewed, along with the major issues of interpretation. Although the role played by conditioned reinforcement in some procedures remains unresolved, the results taken together leave little doubt that the underlying idea of conditioned value is a critical component of behavior theory that is necessary to explain many different types of data. Other processes (marking, bridging) may also operate to produce effects similar to those of conditioned reinforcement, but these clearly cannot explain the full domain of experimental effects ascribed to conditioned reinforcement and should be regarded as complements to the concept rather than theoretical competitors. Examples of practical and theoretical applications of the concept of conditioned reinforcement are also considered.Key words: conditioned reinforcement, behavior theory, observing behavior, chain schedules, delay of reinforcement, concurrent chains A general assumption in contemporary behavior analysis is that human behavior is best understood in terms of the contingencies of reinforcement operating on that behavior. Yet much, if not most, human behavior has little immediate impact on satisfying the biological motives that underlie the reinforcement contingencies commonly studied in the laboratory. People are not born with a tendency to work for money, to like the taste of alcohol or coffee, or to discover laws of behavior. We are also not born with the motivation to engage in compulsive hand washing or to be fearful ofspeaking in public. Such motives, both positive and negative, are learned,'and a major task of any behavior theory is to specify how such learning occurs, both in order to have a complete theory of behavior

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Section: Practical Uses Of Conditioned Reinforcementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Practical Uses Of Conditioned Reinforcementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conditioned Reinforcement: Experimental and Theoretical Issues

1994

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“…A number of procedural factors might underlie these conflicting results although none appears more obvious than the present use of shock within the test situation. It does not appear that freeloading experiments have previously been performed in situations which involve the concurrent use of an aversive control procedure (see review by Osborne, 1977). If this is, indeed, the basis for the conflicting results, then its theoretical implications are considerable.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transfer of conditioned suppression and conditioned acceleration from instrumental to consummatory baselines

Davis

Shattuck

1980

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Following training on a variable-interval food reinforcement schedule, rats were exposed to Pavlovian procedures which produced reliable conditioned suppression and conditioned acceleration of the leverpressing (instrumental) baseline. When free food was simultaneously made available in the test cage, all subjects spent the majority of each session "freeloading," that is, eating food from a dish rather than leverpressing for it. When superimposed upon the freeloading baseline, the conditioned suppression and conditioned acceleration procedures affected the rate of pellet consumption identically in magnitude and direction to their previous effects on leverpressing. These results suggest a motivational mechanism for conditioned suppression and acceleration, rather than one which depends upon spurious punishment of specific response sequences.

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“…Our preceding comments deal exclusively with aversive events. Controllability is apparently less an issue in the current literature dealing with appetitive events, e.g., the "contrafreeloading" phenomenon (Osborne, 1977). Osborne's review indicates that under certain conditions, rats and pigeons will respond for food in the presence of free food.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Control over noxious events and choice

Abbott

Badia

1979

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Three experiments are reported assessing whether rats prefer controllable over uncontrollable aversive shock. In Experiment 1, subjects chose between escapable and inescapable shock while relative shock duration varied parametrically. In Experiment 2, subjects again chose between escapable and inescapable shock, but duration was held constant and equal. The final experiment gave subjects a choice between avoidable and unavoidable shock under several signaling conditions. Choice behavior proved sensitive to relative shock duration and to predictability of shock but not to controllability of shock.Controllability and predictability are closely related dimensions. When an event is controllable, it is contingent upon the occurrence of a response. When an event is predictable, it is contingent upon the occurrence of a stimulus. Over the past several years, research in our laboratory has focused on the effects of predictability on choice behavior. , 1975). This work has consistently demonstrated a strong preference for predictable over unpredictable aversive events that is independent of the presence or absence of control. In light of the conceptual similarity between controllability and predictability, it may be that a similar preference exists for controllable over uncontrollable aversive events.Several findings indirectly support this prediction. These findings suggest that controllable shock conditions are less aversive than uncontrollable shock conditions. For example, stimuli paired with escapable shock produce less response suppression than do stimuli paired with inescapable shock (Desiderato & Newman, 1971;Imada & Soga, 1971;Mowrer & Viek, 1948; Osborne, Mattingly, Redmon, & Osborne, 1975). Further, less ulceration is produced by escapable shock (Moot, Cebula, & Crabtree, 1970) and by avoidable-escapable shock (Weiss, 1968, Experiment 2, 1971a, 1971b than by shock that is unavoidable and inescapable. Similarly, controllable shock Experiment 1 of this report was based on a thesis submitted by the first author under the direction of the second to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree. The research was supported by Grant BG-33725 from the National Science Foundation. Reprints may be obtained from Pietro Badia, . Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 43403. produces less weight loss and faster weight gain (Weiss, 1968(Weiss, , 1971a(Weiss, , 1971cand results in less depletion of whole-brain norepinephrine (Weiss, Stone, & Harrell, 1970).lf, as these data suggest, controllability reduces the aversiveness of noxious situations, then subjects should prefer those conditions where control over shock is available over those where such control is absent. However, a direct test of this prediction by Schuster and Rachlin (1968) failed to obtain such a preference.' They gave pigeons in a concurrent-chains procedure a choice between a terminal link containing response-dependent shock and one containing res...

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The free food (contrafreeloading) phenomenon: A review and analysis

Cited by 205 publications

References 109 publications

Conditioned Reinforcement: Experimental and Theoretical Issues

Conditioned Reinforcement: Experimental and Theoretical Issues

Transfer of conditioned suppression and conditioned acceleration from instrumental to consummatory baselines

Control over noxious events and choice

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