Kennon A. Lattal

Response acquisition with delayed reinforcement.

Discrete responses of experimentally naive, food-deprived White Carneaux pigeons (key pecks) or Sprague-Dawley rats (bar or omnidirectional lever presses) initiated unsignaled delay periods that terminated with food delivery. Each subject first was trained to eat from the food source, but no attempt was made to shape or to otherwise train the response. In both species, the response developed and was maintained. Control procedures excluded the simple passage of time, response elicitation or induction by food presentation, type of operandum, food delivery device location, and adventitious immediate reinforcement of responding as the basis for the effects. Results revealed that neither training nor immediate reinforcement is necessary to establish new behavior. The conditions that give rise to both the first and second response are discussed, and the results are related to other studies of the delay of reinforcement and to explanations of behavior based on contingency or correlation and contiguity.

Handbook of Research Methods in Human Operant Behavior

Basic Considerations: The Experimental Analysis of Human Operant Behavior K.A. Lattal, M. Perone. The Human Subject C. Pilgrim. Experimental Design and Analysis in the Laboratory Study of Human Operant Behavior A. Baron, M.Perone. Reinforcement and Punishment: Reinforcement: Schedule Performance R.L. Shull, P.S. Lawrence. Choice and Self-Control J.E. Mazur. Negative Reinforcement and Punishment J. Crosbie. Stimulus Control: Stimulus Control Procedures K.J. Saunders, D.C. Williams. Stimulus Equivalence G. Green, R.R. Saunders. Remembering and Forgetting J.T. Wixted. Psychophysics: Methods and Analyses of Signal Detection R.J. Irwin, D. McCarthy. Verbal and Social Behavior: Behavioral Processes of Infants and Young Children P. Weisberg, C. Rovee-Collier. The Verbal Governance of Behavior E. Shimoff, A.C. Catania. The Taxonomy of Verbal Behavior A.C. Catania. New Direction:. Establishment of a Laboratory for Continuous Observation of Human Behavior D.J. Bernstein. Laboratory Methods in Human Behavioral Ecology T.D. Hackenberg. Human Behavioral Pharmacology: An overview of Laboratory Methods S.T. Higgins, J.R. Hughes. Appendix: Ethical Guidelines in Research with Humans (American Psychological Association). 3 Additional Chapters. Index.

Behavior Theory and Philosophy

Preface. 1. Themes in Behavior Theory and Philosophy K.A. Lattal, P.N. Chase. I: Philosophical Foundations. 2. Explanation and Description in Traditional Neobehaviorism, Cognitive Psychology, and Behavior Analysis J. Moore. 3. Pragmatism and Behavior Analysis K.A. Lattal, J. Laipple. 4. Empiricism J. Marr. 5. Explanatory Reductionism in Behavior Analysis D.W. Schaal. 6. Selectionism J.W. Donahoe. 7. Humanism and Skinners Radical Behaviorism J.E.R. Staddon. 8. Concepts and Theories: Relation to Scientific Categories E. Ribes-Inesta. II: Interpretations 9. Cognition D.C. Palmer. 10. Privacy H. Rachlin. 11. When We Speak of Intentions P.N. Hineline. 12. Operant Contingencies and the Origin of Cultures S.S. Glenn. 13. Implications of Determinism: Personal Responsibility and the Value of Science M. Chiesa. 14. Advancing Behaviorism in Judeo-Christian Culture: Suggestions for Finding Common Ground C.M. Galuska. 15. Behavior Analysis and a Modern Psychology E.K. Morris. III: Extensions to Research and Application. 16. Verbal Governance, Verbal Shaping, and Attention to Verbal Stimuli A.C. Catania. 17. Creativity and Reinforced Variability A. Neuringer. 18. In the Analysis of Behavior, What Does Develop Mean? D.M. Baer, J. Rosales-Ruiz. 19. Behavioral Education: Pragmatic Answers to Questions about Novelty and Efficiency P.N. Chase. 20. Developmental Disabilities:Scientific Inquiry and Interactions in Behavior Analysis N.A. Neef, S.M. Peterson. 21. Corporate Cultures J.E. Krapfl.

DELAYED REINFORCEMENT OF OPERANT BEHAVIOR

The experimental analysis of delay of reinforcement is considered from the perspective of three questions that seem basic not only to understanding delay of reinforcement, but, also, by implication, the contributions of temporal relations between events to operant behavior. The first question is whether effects of the temporal relation between responses and reinforcers can be isolated from other features of the environment that often accompany delays, such as stimuli or changes in the temporal distribution or rate of reinforcement. The second question is that of the effects of delays on operant behavior. Beyond the common denominator of a temporal separation between reinforcers and the responses that produce them, delay of reinforcement procedures differ from one another along several dimensions, making delay effects circumstance dependent. The final question is one of interpreting delay of reinforcement effects. It centers on the role of the response-reinforcer temporal relation in the context of other, concurrently operating behavioral processes.

A Behavioral Analysis of Dog Bites to Children

Approximately one million dog bites occur yearly in the United States, and 60% to 70% of these are to children. Although the majority of dog bites are not serious, some are disfiguring or, on rare occasions, fatal. Bites are disruptive and stressful but also are preventable. This paper reviews the epidemiology of dog bites, examines the conditions under which bites occur, and discusses behavioral factors related to the dog and to the child that determine whether a bite will occur. Dog bites then are compared with other childhood injuries, and strategies for intervening both before and after a dog bite occurs are discussed. J Dev Behav Pediatr 15:44-52, 1994

Antecedent reinforcement schedule training and operant response reinstatement in rats

Rats were trained on reinforcement schedules which generated high or low response rates. After extinguishing responding by eliminating food-reinforcement delivery, response-independent food presentations reinstated responding. Higher response rates occurred if the schedule preceding extinction controlled high response rates, suggesting that discriminative stimulus properties of the reinforcer were a function of antecedent training schedules.

Differential resurgence and response elimination.

Resurgence refers to the transient recovery of previously reinforced, but presently not reinforced, responding when more recently reinforced responding is extinguished. The primary purpose of our research was to determine how differential resurgence results from the procedures used to eliminate that responding. There were three conditions in each of five experiments. In Condition 1, key pecking by pigeons was maintained under a two-component multiple variable-interval (VI) 30-s VI 30-s schedule. In Condition 2, this pecking was eliminated in different ways across components. In Condition 3, extinction was in effect for all responses, and resurgence of key pecking was compared across components. These three conditions were repeated for most pigeons, and the procedures used to eliminate responding in Condition 2 varied across experiments. In Experiment 1, there was greater resurgence, and an earlier onset of it, after a differential-reinforcement-of-other-behavior (DRO) schedule than after a VI schedule was correlated with pecking an alternative key. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the differential resurgence in Experiment 1 probably was not due to conditional stimulus control or the periodicity of food delivery, respectively. In Experiment 4, there was no systematic difference in resurgence after either a DRO schedule or a VI schedule correlated with treadle pressing. In Experiment 5, there was greater resurgence, and/or an earlier onset of it, after a VI schedule correlated with treadle pressing than after a VI schedule correlated with pecking an alternative key. Taken together, the results showed that the reinforcement of an alternative key-peck response was the most effective means of reducing subsequent key-peck resurgence. The relation of these results to an understanding of resurgence is discussed.

Contingency and behavior analysis.

The concept of contingency is central to theoretical discussions of learned behavior and in the application of learning research to problems of social significance. This paper reviews three aspects of the contingency concept as it has been developed by behavior analysts. The first is the empirical analysis of contingency through experimental studies of both human and nonhuman behavior. The second is the synthesis of experimental studies in theoretical and conceptual frameworks to yield a more general account of contingency and to integrate the concept with other behavioral processes. The third aspect is one of practical considerations in the application of the contingency concept in both laboratory and applied settings.

Super-resurgence: ABA renewal increases resurgence

Previously extinguished operant responding recurs under both resurgence and renewal procedures, but the effects of combining these procedures on recurrence has not been studied. Because renewal and resurgence are known to independently produce response recurrence, we examined whether greater resurgence would occur if the resurgence procedure was combined with an ABA renewal procedure, relative to a resurgence procedure without contextual changes. Three pigeons were exposed to a concurrent resurgence procedure in which key colors served as contextual stimuli. In the Training phase, reinforcement for pecking two keys was scheduled on concurrent variable-interval (VI) 120-s VI 120-s schedules, each correlated with different key colors. In the Alternative Reinforcement phase, reinforcement occurred when neither key was pecked for 20-s (a differential-reinforcement-of-other-behavior [DRO] 20-s schedule). During this phase, one of the key colors was changed (ABA key), while the other key color remained as in the Training phase (AAA key). In the third phase, reinforcement was not provided and the color of the ABA key was changed back to the color in effect during the Training phase while the same color remained in effect on the other key. Greater resurgence occurred on the ABA renewal key with each pigeon, demonstrating that a superimposed ABA renewal procedure increases resurgence.

Resurgence of temporal patterns of responding

The resurgence of temporal patterns of key pecking by pigeons was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, positively accelerated and linear patterns of responding were established on one key under a discrete-trial multiple fixed-interval variable-interval schedule. Subsequently, only responses on a second key produced reinforcers according to a variable-interval schedule. When reinforcement on the second key was discontinued, positively accelerated and linear response patterns resurged on the first key, in the presence of the stimuli previously correlated with the fixed- and variable-interval schedules, respectively. In Experiment 2, resurgence was assessed after temporal patterns were directly reinforced. Initially, responding was reinforced if it approximated an algorithm-defined temporal pattern during trials. Subsequently, reinforcement depended on pausing during trials and, when it was discontinued, resurgence of previously reinforced patterns occurred for each pigeon and for 2 of 3 pigeons during a replication. The results of both experiments demonstrate the resurgence of temporally organized responding and replicate and extend previous findings on resurgence of discrete responses and spatial response sequences.