AVERSIVE CONTROL: A SEPARATE DOMAIN?

Traditionally, aversive control has been viewed as a separate domain within behavior theory. Sometimes this separateness has been based upon a distinction between reinforcement and punishment, and sometimes upon a distinction between positive and negative reinforcement. The latter is regarded here as the more compelling basis, due to some inherent procedural asymmetries. An approach to the interpretation of negative reinforcement is presented, with indication of types of experiments that support it and that also point to promising directions for further work. However, most of the interpretive issues that arise here are relevant to positively reinforced behavior as well. These include: possible reformulation of the operant/respondent distinction; the place of emotional concepts in behavior analysis; the need for simultaneous, complementary analysis on differing time scales; the understanding of behavioral situations with rewarding or aversive properties that depend as much upon the contingencies that the situations involve as upon the primary rewarding or aversive stimuli that they include. Thus, an adequate understanding of this domain, which has been traditionally viewed as distinct, has implications for all domains of behavior-analytic theory.     

Searching for the variables that control human rule‐governed “insensitivity”

Verbal rules or instructions often exert obvious and meaningful control over human behavior. Sometimes instructions benefit the individual by enabling faster acquisition of a skill or by obviating an aversive consequence. However, research has also suggested a clear disadvantage: “insensitivity” to changing underlying contingencies. The two experiments described here investigated the variables that control initial rule‐following behavior and rule‐following insensitivity. When the initial rule was inaccurate, behavior was consistent with the rule for approximately half of participants and all participants' behavior was mostly insensitive to changing contingencies. When the initial rule was accurate, behavior of all participants was consistent with it and behavior for nearly all participants was insensitive to changes in underlying contingencies. These findings have implications for how best to establish and maintain rule‐following behavior in applied settings when deviant behavior would be more reinforcing to the individual.     

Self-punitive behavior in humans: Effects of a self-fulfilling prophecy

Human subjects were exposed to contingencies which programmed aversive tones (100 db). Two types of contingencies were employed: self-confirming (i.e., self-fulfilling prophecies), in which the aversive tone was occasioned by the prediction it was about to occur; and self-disconfirming, in which the tone was probable when subjects predicted it would not occur. Experiments 1 and 2 used a modified classical conditioning paradigm, and demonstrated that a self-confirming contingency maintained reliable self-punitive responding, i.e., subjects consistently predicted and therefore obtained tones on every trial. Subjects in Experiment 3 were instructed to express predictions continuously throughout four sessions to ensure adequate sampling of the various predictions. Subjects exposed to a self-disconfirming contnngency reliably evidenced awareness of the contingency in effect (judged by answers on a postexperimental questionnaire), whereas subjects exposed to a self-confirming contingency failed to show effective avoidance behavior or contingency awareness. Experiment 4 investigated free-operant self-punitive behavior, utilizing a single prediction response button, which subjects depressed repeatedly. Subjects were exposed to either periodic or aperiodic punishment schedules over as many as four sessions. In general, more persistent self-punitive responding was found in the groups receiving periodic punishment. The results from the four experiments show that self-confirming contingencies can effectively prolong self-punitive responding in human subjects. The findings are consistent with a blocking interpretation of self-punitive behavior, which asserts that when an aversive event is already predicted by stimuli in the situation (including temporal cues), the association between a response and punishment is impaired, and self-punitive responding is likely to be maintained. An integration of human and animal self-punitive research is proposed.     

Rule-governed behavior and behavioral anthropology

According to cultural materialism, cultural practices result from the materialistic outcomes of those practices, not from sociobiological, mentalistic, or mystical predispositions (e.g., Hindus worship cows because, in the long run, that worship results in more food, not less food). However, according to behavior analysis, such materialistic outcomes do not reinforce or punish the cultural practices, because such outcomes are too delayed, too improbable, or individually too small to directly reinforce or punish the cultural practices (e.g., the food increase is too delayed to reinforce the cow worship). Therefore, the molar, materialistic contingencies need the support of molecular, behavioral contingencies. And according to the present theory of rule-governed behavior, the statement of rules describing those molar, materialistic contingencies can establish the needed molecular contingencies. Given the proper behavioral history, such rule statements combine with noncompliance to produce a learned aversive condition (often labeled fear, anxiety, or guilt). The termination of this aversive condition reinforces compliance, just as its presentation punishes noncompliance (e.g., the termination of guilt reinforces the tending to a sick cow). In addition, supernatural rules often supplement these materialistic rules. Furthermore, the production of both materialistic and supernatural rules needs cultural designers who understand the molar, materialistic contingencies.     

Distressed behavior and its context

Behavior that is commonly labeled as indicating distress may have an important function in certain clinical problems. Evidence suggests that "distressed" behavior is displayed more frequently by persons who are depressed or experiencing chronic pain. Such behavior includes nonverbal facial expressions and body postures which are typically labeled as "sad," and verbal responses involving self-denigration or complaints. Such behaviors appear to form a functional response class which has a unique impact on others. The behavior appears to be more likely among persons who are receiving aversive stimulation. Recipients of distressed behavior are more likely to experience negative emotion, yet be solicitous toward the person who displays distressed behavior. Under circumstances where distressed behavior is unsuccessful in reducing aversive stimulation, the behavior may be shaped and maintained by the fact that it temporarily reduces the probability of others behaving aggressively toward the person displaying distress. Thus, the development of a pattern of high rates of distressed behavior that characterizes clinically depressed persons and persons in chronic pain may be partly a result of the unique social contingencies that surround this behavior.     

Sign-tracking behavior in aversive conditioning: Its acquisition via a Pavlovian mechanism and its suppression by operant contingencies

When rats are presented with Pavlovian backward pairings in which shock is the unconditioned stimulus (US) and an elevated platform the conditioned stimulus (CS), they show a strong tendency to approach the platform. Attempts were made at evaluating the nature of the associative mechanisms responsible for the acwuisition and maintenance of the approach behavior. In Experiment 1, following a baseline period when platform presentations were given in the absence of shocks, first (training I), approach to the platform was prevented and subjects were exposed to either backward, forward, or random presentations of shock and platform: this procedure attempted to minimize the effects of response learning on the acquisition of approach behavior. Then (training II), all subjects received backward shock-platform pairings and had access to the platform. Approach to the platform was stronger in animals previously exposed to backward pairings than in the animals of the other two groups. Also, animals preexposed to forward platform-shock pairings showed suppression of approach behavior on the first trial of training II relative to their performance on the last trial of baseline. These data suggest that a stimulus-reinforcer learning mechanism alone is sufficent for the acquisition of approach. Experiments 2a and 2b evaluated the effects of “punishing” operant contingencies on Pavlovian-produced approach behavior. The results showed that approach can be eliminated, but only after repeated exposure to an operant contingency which consisted of the immediate closure of the platform upon approach responding. These data suggest that approach behavior produced by Pavlovian contingencies can be modified by operant contingencies. Taken together, these data provide additional support for a sign-tracking notion in aversive conditioning.     

Choice for reinforced behavioral variability in children with autism spectrum disorder

Although individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to behave repetitively, certain reinforcement contingencies (e.g., lag schedules) can be used to increase behavioral variability. In a lag schedule, reinforcers only follow responses that differ from recent responses. The present study was designed to promote variable play behavior in preschoolers with ASD interacting with playsets and figurines and to assess preference for variability and repetition contingencies. Data have shown a preference for variability in pigeons and college students, but this effect has not been explored in clinical populations. In this experiment, preschoolers with ASD were taught to discriminate between variability and repetition contingencies. Only play behaviors that met a lag schedule were reinforced in the presence of one color, and only repetitive behaviors were reinforced in the presence of another. After differential performance was established, participants experienced a concurrent chains schedule. Participants chose between the colors taught in training and then completed a play session with the selected contingency. One participant selected variability and repetition equally. The other participants showed a slight preference for variability. These results indicate that some individuals with ASD may play repetitively, not because they prefer repetition, but because they require additional teaching to play variably.     

The impact of behavior-specific and behavior-nonspecific reinforcement on child compliance to mother directives

Theories of child socialization differ with regard to the influence they attribute to behavior-specific reinforcement contingencies versus behavior-nonspecific reinforcement contingencies (i.e. social responsiveness). The present research investigated, at a within-individual level, the relationship between both types of reinforcement and child compliance with maternal directives. Behavior-specific reinforcement was defined as the history of reinforcement obtained by children for prior episodes of compliance and noncompliance to mother directives. Behavior-nonspecific reinforcement was defined as the history of reinforcement obtained by children for prosocial and aversive behaviors unrelated to mother directives. It was hypothesized that both reinforcement processes would be related to child responses to subsequent mother directives. The findings support these hypotheses. The discussion addresses caretaker social responsiveness as an intervention target of behavioral family therapy.     

TASK DIFFICULTY AND ABERRANT BEHAVIOR IN SEVERELY HANDICAPPED STUDENTS

The influence of task difficulty on aberrant behavior was investigated with three severely handicapped students. Noticeably higher rates of problem behavior occurred in demand compared to no-demand conditions. In addition, there were higher rates of problem behaviors on difficult versus easy tasks. Both these findings were validated with visual discrimination and perceptual motor tasks. An errorless learning procedure effectively minimized errors and aberrant behavior in visual discrimination tasks but not in perceptual motor tasks. It was conceptualized that aberrant behavior was maintained by negative reinforcement contingencies. Difficult tasks were aversive to the children, who emitted aberrant responses to escape or avoid such tasks. By contrast, conditions in which no demands were made, easy tasks, and, in visual discrimination learning, errorless tasks, were less aversive and resulted in little or no problem behavior. Implications for reducing maladaptive behaviors through curricular modifications are discussed and contrasted to more traditional consequence manipulation approaches.     

Cooperative learning in the classroom: Contingencies,group interactions,and students with special needs

Cooperative learning activities play a significant role in the schools. As such, these activities should be of interest to applied behavior analysts concerned with educational interventions. A number of factors appear to contribute to the impact of cooperative group activities, including the level of individual accountability, group contingencies, and the types of interactive behaviors in which students engage during group activities. This paper reviews current research on cooperative learning, focusing on the relationships between student behaviors, contingencies of reinforcement and group outcomes. The social and academic skills with which students enter cooperative learning activities, and the impact of these skills on students' behavior within groups and on the social and academic outcomes of groups is considered. Problems associated with the failure of cooperative groups are also addressed. The research potentials for applied behavior analysts are discussed.     

Tacting and manding in correspondence training: effects of child selection of verbalization.

We investigated correspondence between verbal and nonverbal behavior in preschool children in a play setting. Four children (4 years old) participated in a multiple baseline across subjects design. Children were asked what toy(s) they were going to play with during an immediately upcoming play period. When no contingencies were placed on either verbal or nonverbal behavior, children showed high rates of correspondence. When children were required to verbalize about a toy from a restricted range of infrequently used toys, but no contingencies were placed on correspondence, low rates of correspondence were observed. High rates of correspondence were noted when reinforcement was contingent on it. Results are discussed in terms of tacting and manding.     

Variable-interval escape from stimuli accompanied by shocks

Individual performances of three rats were examined under a procedure in which steady rates of bar pressing were maintained by conditioned aversive stimulation. Originally neutral visual and auditory stimuli were accompanied by widely and irregularly spaced pulses of shock; they were terminated on a variable-interval schedule by pressing a bar. The contingencies between behavior and shock were also duplicated in a control procedure in which no visual or auditory stimuli were provided. Pressing observed under the control procedure was attributed to differences in the aversiveness of pressing and nonpressing behavior engendered by differences in the incidence of shock following the two classes of behavior. Increased rates with visual and auditory stimuli were attributed to termination of conditioned aversive stimulation. Control rates declined more rapidly than did experimental rates as the mean interval between successive shocks was lengthened; both rates tended to decline when less than 60 sec was allowed as time out from shocks following the successful response. In the control procedure, discrimination between the continuation and discontinuation of the shock series, as measured by relative rates, depended on the relative length of the interval between shocks and the time-out period. Regular warm-up accelerations in rate were noted following an initial delay in responding at the beginning of each session. The length of time required for the warm-up depended on the length of the mean interval between shocks, indicating that exposure to a certain amount of shock was required to establish a supporting state for the observed performance.     

BEHAVIORAL CUSPS: A DEVELOPMENTAL AND PRAGMATIC CONCEPT FOR BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

Most concepts of development explain certain behavior changes as products or markers of the invariable succession of emerging periods, stages, refinements, or achievements that define and order much of an individual's life. A different but comparable concept can be derived from the most basic mechanisms of behavior analysis, which are its environmental contingencies, and from its most basic strategy, which is to study behavior as its subject matter. From a behavior-analytic perspective, the most fundamental developmental questions are (a) whether these contingencies vary in any systematic way across the life span, and thus make behavior change in a correspondingly systematic way; and (b) whether some of these contingencies and their changes have more far-reaching consequences than others, in terms of the importance to the organism and others, of the behavior classes they change. Certain behavior changes open the door to especially broad or especially important further behavior change, leading to the concept of the behavioral cusp. A behavioral cusp, then, is any behavior change that brings the organism's behavior into contact with new contingencies that have even more far-reaching consequences. Of all the environmental contingencies that change or maintain behavior, those that accomplish cusps are developmental. Behavior change remains the fundamental phenomenon of development for a behavior-analytic view; a cusp is a special instance of behavior change, a change crucial to what can come next.     

Escalation of irritable aggression: Control by consequences and antecedents

Two experiments demonstrated that rats could be trained in a negative reinforcement paradigm to display a shock-induced aggressive response on the first shock presented. Later, rats that had been submitted to the negative reinforcement training procedure displayed more shock-induced aggression than did control groups during a test session that was situationally different from the one used during training. A third experiment demonstrated that noxious antecedent events, if presented with sufficient rapidity, can combine to increase the probability of aggressive behavior. The three experiments together suggest that aversive antecedents and reinforcement contingencies could be involved in the escalation of irritable aggression.     

Inducing Hypocrisy to Reduce Prejudicial Responses among Aversive Racists

Might a hypocrisy induction procedure reduce prejudicial behavior among aversive racists? We identified aversive racists as individuals low in explicit prejudice but high in implicit prejudice toward Asians. Results revealed that aversive racists, but not truly low prejudiced participants (i.e., those low in both explicit and implicit prejudice), responded to a hypocrisy induction procedure with increased feelings of guilt and discomfort, compared to those in a control condition. Furthermore, aversive racists, but not low prejudiced participants, responded to a hypocrisy induction procedure with a reduction in prejudicial behavior. These results suggest that consciousness raising might play an important role in motivating aversive racists to reduce their prejudicial behavior.     

A behavioral perspective on college teaching

Much of the subject matter learned in college, particularly during the first two years, is taught in relatively large classes with text and lecture as the primary source of the information being learned. If students make effective and prolonged contact with these sources, they can acquire extensive verbal repertoires in many areas of knowledge. Unfortunately there are many other activities that compete for the typical student's study time. Several factors are often cited as variables that will support study behavior in competition with other activities, but the only powerful one available to the teacher is the exam grade, as it is related to the course grade. However, unless exams are clearly related to appropriate study behavior, require through and extensive coverage of the subject matter, occur frequently (preferably no less often than once a week), and are also clearly related to the course grade, even this factor will not generate prolonged and effective study behavior. Effective college teaching is essentially a form of aversive control, but if done properly the aversiveness is quite mild, and such aversive control can be responsible for the development of large and valuable intellectual repertoires.     

The Influence of Clinical Experience and Assessment Method on the Evaluation of Child Behavior Change

This research examined how people’s ability to detect behavior change in simulated child targets is affected by their clinical experience and the assessment method they use. When using summary assessment methods that are widely employed in research and clinical practice, both inexperienced and experienced clinical staff detected changes in the overall frequency of targets’ aggressive behavior, but were not uniquely influenced by changes in targets’ reactions to social events. When using contextualized assessment methods that focused on conditional reactions, experienced staff showed greater sensitivity than novices to context-specific changes in targets’ aggressive and prosocial reactions to aversive events. Experienced staff also showed greater sensitivity to context-specific changes in their overall impressions of change, but only for aggression. The findings show how clinically experienced judges become more attuned to if…then… contingencies in children’s social behavior, and how summary assessment methods may hamper the detection of change processes.     

A Functional Analysis of Schizophrenia

There has been a renaissance in research examining psychosocial risk factors for the development of schizophrenia, yet little work has been done to integrate these factors into a comprehensive psychological analysis of this disorder. This article highlights, from a Skinnerian functional analytic perspective, how the specific symptoms of schizophrenia may develop and be maintained. It is hypothesized that the early environment of an individual who later develops schizophrenia is socially isolating and defeating, which leads to excessive self-focused attention and deficient corrective social feedback for anomalous sensory experiences. Isolation and defeat also make it less likely that verbal behavior will come under the control of subtle interpersonal cues and more likely that such behavior will come under the control of internal stimuli. A history of social failure may also lead individuals to avoid goal pursuits and intense emotional expressiveness. The article also highlights the continuity between the effects of contingencies of survival in one’s ancestors, and contingencies of reinforcement in the individual in the development of schizophrenia, and how a functional analysis may aid in the psychosocial treatment of this disorder.

     

Achievement behavior: A situational interpretation

A situational interpretation of achievement behavior is proposed. This interpretation assumes that the reward contingencies of the immediate situation determine whether performance will be high or low. The results of four experiments supported the prediction that women and men will improve their performance if high achievement is associated with external rewards and will only decrease their performance when low achievement is associated with external rewards. In four additional experiments it was shown that both women and men will describe themselves as high in intellectual ability or as low in ability as a direct function of external rewards contingencies. The differences between situational and personality interpretations of achievement behavior are discussed, as well as the viability of the concept of fear of success and internalized sex roles as explanatory constructs.