Suggested Greek translations of expressions in the experimental analysis of behavior

Greek-English and English-Greek translations of expressions in the experimental analysis of behavior are presented. Included is a short discussion of some of the problems which arose, partly because of the mentalistic nature of Greek science.     

The operant conditioning of conversation

Human conversation is a natural place to begin the study of social responses. In a conversation, a number of individuals use one another's responses as cues for their own behavior. So long as a conversation is being held, the speakers must talk in some order. Four experiments were conducted to test whether differentially reinforcing a group of speakers can bring the order of speakers under experimental control. The results are all consistent with the hypothesis. The paper also devises and evaluates different procedures for studying conversational sequences and examines associated statistical problems.     

A revised list of Spanish translations of operant terminology

The experimental analysis of behavior has grown enormously in Latin America within the last decade. This paper offers an updating revision of suggested Spanish translations of operant expressions.     

The dynamics of operant conditioning

Existing models of operant learning are relatively insensitive to historical properties of behavior and applicable to only limited data sets. This article proposes a minimal set of principles based on short-term and long-term memory mechanisms that can explain the major static and dynamic properties of operant behavior in both single-choice and multiresponse situations. The critical features of the theory are as follows: (a) The key property of conditioning is assessment of the degree of association between responses and reinforcement and between stimuli and reinforcement; (b) the contingent reinforcement is represented by learning expectancy, which is the combined prediction of response-reinforcement and stimulus-reinforcement associations; (c) the operant response is controlled by the interplay between facilitatory and suppressive variables that integrate differences between expected (long-term) and experienced (short-term) events; and (d) very-long-term effects are encoded by a consolidated memory that is sensitive to the entire reinforcement history. The model predicts the major qualitative features of operant phenomena and then suggests an experimental test of theoretical predictions about the joint effects of reinforcement probability and amount of training on operant choice. We hypothesize that the set of elementary principles that we propose may help resolve the long-standing debate about the fundamental variables controlling operant conditioning.     

Procedure for operant conditioning of the dog

Most reports arising from operant conditioning procedures have little or no emphasis on the actual behavior shaping or acquisition phase of the responses which are the cumulative frequency of the well-practiced act. There is a need for more detail for beginners or those desiring a clearer understanding of procedures leading to the finally reported data. The procedure reported here is typically used to compare animal subjects or conditions, such as drugs, both in the acquisition and final phases of behavior. Beginning with an unconditional response (e.g. feeding) a bridging stimulus is paired in classical conditioning fashion. From that point on the bridging stimulus and UCS (feeding—or shock) are used immediately as reward or reinforcement only for responses “in the direction of the final desired behavior. The number of timed standardized behavior shaping sessions to criterion is the best index of acquisition phase performance and the total number bar presses or the rate of bar pressing (slope) is the usual index of operant responding. With timid animals it is often necessary to administer tranquilizers.     

Effects of operant conditioning on the GSR

Each of nine Ss was run for 11 daily sessions. Except for the first (operant level) and last two (extinction) sessions, 500-ohm drops in skin resistance were followed by reinforcement (light). These reinforcement periods lasted 20 min and were preceded by 10-min control periods during which no reinforcement was administered. Although the results showed no evidence for operant conditioning of the GSR, they did indicate that increased emission of GSR's occurred during the reinforcement period. This effect was shown to hold for Ss with low operant levels of GSR's but not for Ss with high operant levels.     

A cellular analogue of operant conditioning.

Using the hippocampal-slice preparation, we attempted to model operant conditioning in vitro by reinforcing pyramidal cell bursting responses with local micropressure applications of transmitters and drugs. The same injections were administered independently of bursting to provide a "noncontingent" control for direct pharmacological stimulation or facilitation of firing. The results suggested that the bursting responses of individual CA1 pyramidal neurons may be reinforced in a dose-related manner by response-contingent (but not noncontingent) injections of dopamine and the selective dopamine D2 agonist, N-0923. N-0924, a stereoisomer of N-0923 that is largely devoid of D2-agonist activity, failed to reinforce CA1 bursting. Burst-contingent injections of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate also failed to reinforce CA1 bursting; indeed, the glutamate applications (whether contingent or random) reduced the likelihood of bursts while increasing the frequency of solitary spikes. Reinforcement delays exceeding 200 ms largely eliminated the reinforcing efficacy of the D2 agonist N-0437 in CA1 operant conditioning. The results are consistent with the suggestion that the behaviorally reinforcing effects of dopaminergic agents can be modeled in vitro in the hippocampal-slice preparation.     

Design decisions in a Pascal-based operant conditioning system

FREDL, a Pascal-based system for control of operant experiments, has been implemented on the IBM PC computer. In the foreground, recurring operations, such as decrementing counters that serve as local clocks, are controlled by a dictionary specifying automatic properties of user defined variables, and random logic is implemented by a user-written Pascal overlay. In the background, the remainder of the program controls communication with the user, output of data to disk, and production of cumulative records.     

Extraversion and reinforcement in verbal operant conditioning.

The present investigation was designed to study the relationship between extraversion and modes of reinforcement in verbal operant conditioning. A 4 X 3 randomized block design was replicated ten times. Eighty graduate and post-graduate male students were individually subjected to the standard Taffel conditioning procedure. When the numbers of conditioned responses produced by introverts and extraverts were compared, it was found that: (1) under negative reinforcement ('bad' and electric shock), with both the female and male experimenters, and under positive reinforcement ('good') with the male experimenter, the introverts' score was the higher of the two; (2) under positive reinforcement ('good') with the female experimenter, the extraverts' score was higher than that of the introverts.     

Muscle tension in human operant heart rate conditioning

The physiological mechanism involved in human operant heart rate conditioning is not known. If skeletal muscle tension is a mediator, it should be possible to generate significant heart rate increases by inconspicuous voluntary muscle tension. Eleven subjects were instructed to generate inconspicuous muscle tension for 90-second periods. No gross muscle movements were observed, but average heart rate during the trials was over 13 beats-per-minute greater than pre-trial base lines. Respiratory pattern changes and surface electromyogram changes did not reliably correlate with heart rate increases. Inconspicuous muscle tension could be a mediator in human operant heart rate conditioning, and cannot be ruled out by absence of change in respiratory pattern or electromyogram.