The Substitutability of Reinforcers

Abstract

Substitutability is a construct borrowed from microeconomics that describes a continuum of possible interactions among the reinforcers in a given situation. Highly substitutable reinforcers, which occupy one end of the continuum, are readily traded for each other due to their functional similarity. Complementary reinforcers, at the other end of the continuum, tend to be consumed jointly in fairly rigid proportion, and therefore cannot be traded for one another except to achieve that proportion. At the center of the continuum are reinforcers that are independent with respect to each other; consumption of one has no influence on consumption of another. Psychological research and analyses in terms of substitutability employ standard operant conditioning paradigms in which humans and nonhumans choose between alternative reinforcers. The range of reinforcer interactions found in these studies is more readily accommodated and predicted when behavior-analytic models of choice consider issues of substitutability. New insights are gained into such areas as eating and drinking, electrical brain stimulation, temporal separation of choice alternatives, behavior therapy, drug use, and addictions. Moreover, the generalized matching law (Baum, 1974) gains greater explanatory power and comprehensiveness when measures of substitutability are included.

Molar Effects of Increasing Amounts and Immediacy to External Food Sources in 4-Hr Sessions

“…These. results contrast well with those obtained with unsignaled concomitant VT pellets (Imam & Hursh, 1991) and support the claim that the substitution effect would improve with discriminability (e.g., Green & Freed, 1993). Contrary to Timberlake's (1984) findings, the present experiment demonstrated sensitivity to the presence and varying amounts of external food on responding during work sessions.…”

“…By implication, shortening the access time to external food should reduce its discount and increase its relative value compared to food earned during worksessions, which should increase the substitution value of external food (e.g., Green & Freed, 1993) and further decrease work-session consumption and responding. The results of Hursh et aL (1989), showing further decreases in work-session consumption and responding when the delay to external food was reduced from 12 hr to 1 hr for monkeys, provided strong, evidence for these predictions.…”

“…The availability of substitutes has been well established in the literature as an important factor distinguishing open from closed economies (e.g., Collier. 1983;Green & Freed, 1993;Hursh, 1980;Hursh et aI., 1989).…”

“…, Davison & Tustin, 1978) from earned pellets in 4-hr and 24-hr sessions. Discriminability, however, should improve the substitution effects of unearned food (see, e.g., Green & Freed, 1993).…”

The aesthetics of intervention in defense of the esoteric

“…Galbicka (1994;31 citations) set out to describe how and why percentile schedules could be made relevant in applied settings, a call subsequently met by several recent JABA papers (e.g., Athens, Vollmer, & Pipkin, 2007;Hall, Maynes, & Reiss, 2009;Miller & Neuringer, 2000). My own current efforts and grants were, in part, inspired by the ''Applications'' segment of Green and Freed (1993;78 citations, 27 of which were articles related to intellectual and developmental disabilities and 24 of which were published in JABA).…”