The power of one reinforcer: The effect of a single reinforcer in the context of shaping

Ten meanings or usages of the terms molecular and molar analyses are based on (1) numbers of responses, (2) durations of activities, (3) levels, (4) scales, (5) contiguity versus correlation, (6) behavioral standards, (7) function with or without structure, (8) local versus global phenomena, and (9) control by shaping of sequential moment-to-moment behavior. These usages reveal divisive viewpoints along with ambiguities in the Law of Effect, the definition of an operant, response strength, response probability, random behavior, time allocation, shaping, controlled versus uncontrolled operants, and roles for ordinary language. Usage 10 is less divisive and combines, and in that sense unifies, molecular behavior, defined as shaped moment-to-moment sequential behaving, and molar, defined as averages of aggregates of those shaped responses. It combines shaping, that establishes and changes operant behaviors, and strengthening that changes the amounts of those shaped behaviors. I conclude that general behavioral theory will combine strengthening with such methods as parametric, hybrid, or nonparametric shaping, and will use computational methods to simulate moment-to-moment behavior streams from which any aggregates of theoretical interest may be computed. Such a synthesis may not require different levels, scales, or new scientific paradigms. Key words: molecular and molar analyses, moment-to-moment and aggregate methods, shaping and strengthening effects of reinforcement, plain English and scientific language, combined theory I am indebted to Jack Marr whose editorial comments on earlier drafts of this paper contributed materially to it. His comments were always helpful role models of conceptual sophistication, breadth of knowledge, and scientific rigor.

Section: Usage 10: Combining Shaping and Aggregatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Molecular (moment‐to‐moment) and molar (aggregate) analyses of behavior

Shimp

2020

“…Placing a food pellet in one hole out of a large matrix of holes, Iversen and Mogensen () verified this pattern occurs in rats. Mal et al () found it in horses, and Hunter and Rosales‐Ruiz () found it in humans (with a clicker instead of food). Thus the burst of lever pressing might have been an artifact of the rat's focal search in and around the food hopper.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Response–reinforcer contiguity versus response‐rate–reinforcer‐rate covariance in rats' lever pressing: Support for a multiscale view

Baum

Aparício

2020

The multiscale molar view sees behavior as a flow, like a river, extended in time. Matching theory expresses the way activities compete for time. Relative time taken by any activity depends on relative induction. The present experiment tested matching theory applied to concurrent contingent and noncontingent food. As adjunctive activities that compete with operant activity, we recorded hopper head entries and presses on a lever near the food hopper that had no programmed consequences. Eight naïve rats were first exposed to a variable-time 60 s schedule, which across conditions was gradually transformed into a variable-interval 60 s schedule by increasing the proportion of food that was delivered contingent on pressing a lever far from the hopper. Another group of 4 rats that had been trained to press a lever near a food hopper were introduced in the second condition, in which one food delivery was contingent on far-lever pressing. We found induction following a power function to describe pressing on the far lever (operant activity). Matching theory combined with power-function induction also accounted for adjunctive activity. Results with single contingent food deliveries provided little support for the molecular view that behavior consists of discrete responses "strengthened" by immediately following reinforcers.

“…Of course we know that single reinforcers have effects. We see them in Skinner's earliest experiments (Skinner, 1930, 1938) as well as in more recent research (Hunter & Rosales‐Ruiz, 2019; Iversen & Mogensen, 1988). We must take care, however, to distinguish between the stimulus effects of delivering reinforcers and the operant effects of the contingent relations between responses and reinforcers.…”

Section: Variability Stereotypy and The Genesis Of Operant Classesmentioning

confidence: 73%

Tactical contingencies in the experimental analysis of reinforcement and operant classes

Catania

2020

In his “Tactics of Scientific Research” (1960), his work on avoidance, his discovery of equivalence classes and his cautions on applications of coercion, Murray Sidman created high standards for behavior analytic research. I illustrate his influence in the context of three examples he might have characterized as pilot studies. Each examined trial N+1 response probabilities depending on whether trial N responding had produced a reinforcer. Differentially reinforced interresponse times, keys pecked in arbitrary matching, and two‐key response sequences provided no robust evidence that reinforcing some response property on trial N raises the probability of responding with that property on trial N+1. These negative findings shed light on the nature of operant classes and on the relation of reinforcers to the responses that produced them. Through selection, reinforcers create operant classes and engender variations of the responses within those classes; operant classes are held together by common contingencies. Sidman extended our understanding of operant classes by expanding them to include equivalence relations.