A. Charles Catania

An Experimental Analysis of Rule-Governed Behavior

Contingency-shaped behavior is behavior directly controlled by the relations between responses and their consequences. But behavior may also come under the control of antecedent stimuli, stimuli in the presence of which responses produce their consequences. We find important examples of such stimuli in human verbal communities, which arrange contingencies that bring behavior under the control of antecedent verbal stimuli called commands, instructions, or rules.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING: SOME LESSONS FROM THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION*

The term paradigm refers to a model or representation, graphic or symbolic or verbal, of the relations among concepts or events. Its origins can be traced to the Greekpara-, by the side of, and deiknunai, to show. In such forms asparadeigma and paradigme, en route from late Latin through early modern French to modern English, it came to refer to an example, especially in grammar or rhetoric. and eventually to a patterned or diagrammatic table of examples.27 In psychology, paradigms have been so closely tied to descriptions of classical conditioning and instrumental conditioning that the term has even come sometimes to be used, mistakenly, to refer to procedures or phenomena themselves rather than to their symbolic representations. By contrast, in Kuhn’s interpretation of the history of science.23 paradigms are more broadly conceived: they are said to represent the common methods, principles, or assumptions of fields of scientific inquiry. The paradigm, like a scientific Weltanschauung, provides the explicit and implicit integrative concepts that allow those in the field to communicate with each other. According to Kuhn. scientific change occurs as a series of revolutions in which old paradigms are successively replaced by new ones. In periods of “normal” science, one generally accepted paradigm guides research. Eventually the paradigm becomes inadequate, and its inadequacies set the stage for a revolution that culminates with the adoption of a new one. Thus, for example, the increasing complexity of the Ptolemaic system, as astronomical measurement became more sophisticated. set the stage for the substitution of the Copernican view. Other paradigm clashes in the physical sciences produced the Newtonian revolution, Einstein’s revolutionary concept of relativity, and the revolution of quantum mechanics. In any area of inquiry, it may be asked whether a paradigm exists at all. I t has been argued, for example, that psychology, as part of the social and behavioral sciences in general, remains in a preparadigmatic stage. According to this view, there is no common body of assumptions among psychological researchers; some go further still and suggest that a paradigm for psychology is not even possible.21 Others maintain, however, that through most of the twentieth century, from John B. Watson’s early pronouncements to the systematic statements of B. F. Skinner. psychological research has been dominated by a behavioral or behaviorist paradigm, and that the behavioral paradigm is at last yielding ground to a cognitive or mentalistic 0ne.~.20.~*.~ The argument goes that psychology is still in the midst of this paradigm clash. and that one or the other paradigm will emerge victorious from the conflict.

Effects of Recording Attendance on Grades in Introductory Psychology.

We recorded attendance for 57 students in an introductory psychology class by having them sign in at each class meeting. For the remaining 57 students, we counted the number of students attending, but kept no record of individual attendance. Students who signed in attended classes more often (absenteeism decreased by one third), and their grades on weekly multiple-choice quizzes were higher, even on questions based on material covered in the text but not in lectures. Thus, simply recording attendance (without awarding course credit for attendance) increased both attendance and overall academic performance.

Time as a Variable in Behavior Analysis

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses time as a variable in behavior analysis. Behavior takes place in time and has temporal dimensions. As an independent variable, time is an essential property of the environments within which behavior occurs. As a dependent variable, it includes not only response durations but also the distribution of responses in time. Each stimulus dimension has intrinsic properties, and those of the temporal dimension differ in important ways from those of other stimulus dimensions such as wavelength, intensity, and spatial extent. The molecular properties of behavior involve the properties of individual stimuli and responses. The processes of discrimination and differentiation are molar as they are aspects of populations of stimuli and responses observed over extended periods of time. If the search for behavior mediating timing were successful, the outcome might be regarded as relevant to the organisms temporal receptor.

Lump detection in simulated human breasts

Sixteen observers palpated silicone models of human breasts containing lumps 1.6-12.1 mm in diameter. Detectability depended on the size of the lump, producing a systematic psychometric function. In eight observers who participated in three or more sessions, performance improved with practice, with most improvement occurring within one or two 26-trial sessions. Three-week retention measures disclosed no appreciable decrease in performance, but a significant correlation was found between the number of lumps detected and duration of trial (p < .01). There was no difference in performance between four observers who used their preferred hands and four observers who used their nonpreferred hands. These data establish that examination of breast models for the detection of lumps simulating cancer is a task amenable to experimental analysis.

Temporal Discrimination in Pigeons

Pigeons trained to peck a lighted key were presented with a key that was alternately dark and lighted. The key was dark for intervals of from 3 to 30 seconds. Pecking of the lighted key was reinforced only after the shortest or, in a second experiment, the longest interval that the key was dark. The pigeons were able to discriminate the duration of the dark interval.

Freedom of Choice: A Behavioral Analysis1

Publisher Summary This chapter deals with behavioral analysis and demonstrates free choice preference. Once the preference is demonstrated, the next step is to explore some of its properties and to identify some of its limiting conditions. These limiting conditions help refine the definition of choice. Concurrent-chain schedules separate the preference for different conditions (in initial links) from the contingencies that maintain responding in those conditions (in terminal links). If a fixed-ratio (FR) schedule maintained higher response rates than a concurrent differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) schedule, it would be inappropriate to conclude that FR responding is preferred to DRL responding. Forced-choice terminal links include more instances of abrupt transitions from a pause to a relatively high FI rate than free-choice terminal links in the sessions presented, but the range of pauses and scalloping overlapped considerably across the two types of terminal link; over sessions, no consistent relation between temporal patterning and preference is evident from visual inspection of the records.

Inhibition and behavioral contrast

In one experiment, pigeons’ pecks were reinforced during successive presentations of one stimulus (RFT) and not during successive presentations of a second stimulus (EXT). The highest rate of pecking occurred during the presentation of RFT stimuli that immediately followed EXT stimuli. In a second experiment, pecks were reinforced during the presentation of any of the top 8 of a column of 16 stimuli (RFT) and not during the presentation of any of the bottom 8 of these stimuli (EXT). The highest rate of pecking occurred during the presentation of the RFT stimulus that was closest to the EXT stimuli.

The Taxonomy of Verbal Behavior

The vocabulary of behavior analysis was established in the context of research with nonverbal organisms (Skinner, 1938). That vocabulary is based on a taxonomy of function rather than one of structure. For example, it identifies operant classes by their environmental effects rather than by their topographies. No major additions were made to this vocabulary when it was applied to the general properties of human behavior (Skinner, 1953), but the extension to specific features of verbal behavior was accompanied by a substantial expansion of technical terms (Skinner, 1957). Some of those terms categorize verbal responses in terms of the basic processes that contribute to their emission; for example, the term tact captures the role of discriminative stimuli in the control of a verbal response. Others take topographical features into account; for example, echoic and textual behavior are distinguished by whether relevant stimuli are auditory or visual. The taxonomy of verbal behavior did not originate in the laboratory. Instead, it was based on observations of verbal behavior in natural environments: The emphasis is upon an orderly arrangement of well-known facts, in accordance with a formulation of behavior derived from an experimental analysis of a more rigorous sort. The present extension to verbal behavior is thus an exercise in interpretation rather than a quantitative extrapolation of rigorous experimental results. (Skinner, 1957, p. 11) Nonetheless, the taxonomy of verbal behavior identifies units into which complex verbal behavior can be decomposed in an experimental analysis, and the continuing expansion of experimental analysis of verbal behavior is likely to add to that taxonomy.

Transfer of function across members of an equivalence class

A child’s presses on response windows behind which stimuli were presented via computer monitor occasionally lit lamps arranged in a column; a present was delivered when all lamps in the column were lit. During the operation of a multiple schedule, the child first learned low rates of pressing in the presence of STAR and high rates in the presence of TREE. Later, in an arbitrary matching task, the child learned to select STAR given wiggly WORM and TREE given BLOCK. When WORM and BLOCK were inserted into the multiple schedule, the low and high rates respectively correlated with STAR and TREE transferred to them. Tests of reflexivity (identity matching) and of symmetry of the arbitrary matching implied that STAR and WORM had become members of one equivalence class, and TREE and BLOCK had become members of another.