The Other Shoe: An Early Operant Conditioning Chamber for Pigeons

We describe an early operant conditioning chamber fabricated by Harvard University instrument maker Ralph Gerbrands and shipped to Japan in 1952 in response to a request of Professor B. F. Skinner by Japanese psychologists. It is a rare example, perhaps the earliest still physically existing, of such a chamber for use with pigeons. Although the overall structure and many of the components are similar to contemporary pigeon chambers, several differences are noted and contrasted to evolutionary changes in this most important laboratory tool in the experimental analysis of behavior. The chamber also is testimony to the early internationalization of behavior analysis.     

The Vienna comparative cognition technology (VCCT): An innovative operant conditioning system for various species and experimental procedures

This article describes a laboratory system for running learning experiments in operant chambers with various species. It is based on a modern version of a classical learning chamber for operant conditioning, the so-called ??Skinner box??. Rather than constituting a stand-alone unit, as is usually the case, it is an integrated part of a comprehensive technical solution, thereby eliminating a number of practical problems that are frequently encountered in research on animal learning and behavior. The Vienna comparative cognition technology combines modern computer, stimulus presentation, and reinforcement technology with flexibility and user-friendliness, which allows for efficient, widely automatized across-species experimentation, and thus makes the system appropriate for use in a broad range of learning tasks.     

Multiple‐stimulus preference assessments: a comparison of free‐operant and restricted‐operant formats

We compared free‐operant and restricted‐operant multiple‐stimulus preference assessments with three children diagnosed with mental retardation. The methods produced comparable results, although the free‐operant assessment identified fewer potential reinforcers than the restricted‐operant assessment. The highest‐ and lowest‐ranked stimuli from both methods were subsequently evaluated in a concurrent‐operants reinforcer assessment. All participants engaged in behavior that resulted in access to the highest‐ranked stimuli the majority of the time, thus validating both preference assessment methods as effective in identifying reinforcers. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The matching law in and within groups of rats

In each of the two experiments, a group of five rats lived in a complex maze containing four small single-lever operant chambers. In two of these chambers, food was available on variable-interval schedules of reinforcement. In Experiment I, nine combinations of variable intervals were used, and the aggregate lever-pressing rates (by the five rats together) were studied. The log ratio of the rates in the two chambers was linearly related to the log ratio of the reinforcement rates in them; this is an instance of Herrnstein's matching law, as generalized by Baum. Summing over the two food chambers, food consumption decreased, and response output increased, as the time required to earn each pellet increased. In Experiment II, the behavior of individual rats was observed by time-sampling on selected days, while different variable-interval schedules were arranged in the two chambers where food was available. Individual lever-pressing rates for the rats were obtained, and their median bore the same “matching” relationship to the reinforcement rates as the group aggregate in Experiment I. There were differences between the rats in their distribution of time and responses between the two food chambers; these differences were correlated with differences in the proportions of reinforcements the rats obtained from each chamber.     

Evaluating different values of effort and reinforcement parameters under concurrent‐ and single‐operant arrangements

If particular parameters (e.g., reinforcer quality) are found to be preferred in a concurrent‐operant arrangement, then these should be incorporated into interventions for maintaining skills in individuals with intellectual disabilities. However, because results from a concurrent‐operant arrangement may not predict those of a single‐operant assessment, interventions with less preferred parameters may also be effective. The purpose of this study was to determine if preference for a particular parameter, determined via concurrent‐operant arrangements, predicted responding when two values of highly and less preferred parameters were manipulated in a single‐operant arrangement. Participants allocated responding to one parameter over another during concurrent‐operant assessments, indicating that certain parameters were highly preferred. However, contingent presentation of two values of less preferred parameters increased compliance to similar levels achieved with two highly preferred parameters in a single‐operant arrangement. These findings suggest that clinicians may have multiple options when selecting parameters for use during intervention.     

Computer control for operant oriented laboratories

A process control procedure using base rate polling within interrupt driven routines, segmentation of time dependent events, and a branch table execution structure was developed for an operant oriented behavioral pharmacology laboratory. Efficient independent control and analysis for eight experimental chambers was obtained utilizing the similarities between various operant techniques.     

Behavioral manipulation of retrieval in a spatial memory task for Drosophila melanogaster

A paradigm for operant conditioning of freely walking single Drosophila flies has been described previously. A fly can be conditioned to avoid one side of a small test chamber if the chamber is heated whenever the fly enters this side. In a subsequent memory test without heat the fly continues to avoid the previously heat-associated side. In this experimental design one cannot exclude that flies mark the heated side by an odor that they subsequently avoid during the test. As a final proof for associative learning in the present experiment, flies are trained in one chamber and tested for learning in another, similar one. Handling in the transfer experiment interferes with memory display, even if the fly is returned to the old chamber instead of a new one. Memory can be reactivated, however, by subjecting the fly to an additional brief training (priming), which is too short to establish significant learning in naive flies. For efficient priming, heat has to be applied to the same side as during training in the old chamber. Only then the fly subsequently shows a side preference and avoids the side of the new chamber, which in the old one had been associated with heat. The two chambers are similar but not identical The transfer experiment therefore raises the question as to what the flies use as spatial reference during training and test. In the light, they can be shown to orientate according to visual landmarks associated with the chamber. In complete darkness, where training and memory scores do not differ from those in the light, they are assumed to use a combination of tactile and idiothetic information for orienting.     

Transfer from “edible” categorization training to feeding behavior in pigeons (Columba livia)1

Abstract: We investigated a transfer from an operant experimental situation to a feeding situation in pigeons using real objects as stimuli. Four pigeons were trained in an operant box to categorize familiar edible items as positives and inedible items as negatives with a go/no‐go procedure. Next, two pairs of unfamiliar edible items were added as stimuli. One of the paired stimuli was arbitrarily assigned as positive and the other as negative. We tested the subjects in their home cages to see whether they would feed on the items they were trained to categorize as positives. In three of the six cases in which categorization training was successful, they continued to peck the positive items. This result suggests that the pigeons transfer what they learned in the operant training situation to the feeding situation.     

The effect of rearing environments on the contrafreeloading phenomenon in rats

Eight naive rats were reared in enriched or impoverished environments for 39 days after weaning and then lived in operant chambers, in which they could obtain food pellets freely or by lever pressing, for 25 or 30 days. The animals raised in an impoverished environment acquired the bar-press response quickly when placed in the operant chambers and maintained a preference for obtaining food via bar pressing. Animals raised in an enriched environment did not learn to lever press, as demonstrated by low levels of responding and the lack of bar pressing when free food was subsequently removed. It was concluded that restricting animals' postweaning environments facilitated learning in a choice situation, probably because of increased activity levels. The results are interpreted in relation to previous studies on rearing environments and on contrafreeloading.     

Web‐based stimulus preference assessment and reinforcer assessment for videos

This study replicated and extended the use of a web‐based multiple‐stimulus‐without‐replacement preference assessment (Curiel, Curiel, Li, Deochand, & Poling, 2018) by adding a web‐based single‐operant reinforcer assessment. Five adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder participated in this study. The web‐based program identified preference hierarchies for 4 of the 5 participants, and the single‐operant reinforcer assessment confirmed that the highly preferred videos functioned as reinforcers. Advantages of computer‐based stimulus preference and reinforcer assessments are discussed.     

Melioration and self-experimentation

Operant researchers rarely use the arena of applied psychology to motivate or to judge their research. Absence of tests by application weakens the field of basic operant research. Early in their development, the physical and biological sciences emphasized meliorative aspects of research. Improvement of human life was a major goal of these young sciences. This paper argues that if basic operant researchers analogously invoked a melioration criterion, the operant field might avoid its tendency toward ingrowth and instead generate a broadly influential science. Operant researchers could incorporate melioration by (a) creating animal models to study applied problems; (b) confronting questions raised by applied analysts and testing hypotheses in applied settings; or (c) performing self-experiments—that is, using experimental methods and behavioral techniques to study and change the experimenter's behavior.     

An economical system incorporating obsolete computers in an operant conditioning laboratory

A variety of obsolete computers were used with a commercial interface device (Alpha Bus) to control animal (rat) operant chambers. Original 28VDC electromechanical equipment was also used in conjunction with the interface to reduce initial equipment costs and maintain broad compatibility. Effective response counting and event control in three separate operant chambers was achieved through the use of secondary processing available on the current interface device. Advantages of the present systems include low initial and maintenance costs, expandability, and adaptability to different computers and applications.     

The commodore 64 and an interface system for controlling operant chambers

This article describes the interfacing of a Commodore 64 computer with an operant chamber. Advantages of the Commodore 64 over the VIC-20 as a controller are listed, and a sample program using dual response levers is given.     

CONTINUOUS RECORDING AND INTEROBSERVER AGREEMENT ALGORITHMS REPORTED IN THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS (1995–2005)

We reviewed all research articles in 10 recent volumes of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA): Vol. 28(3), 1995, through Vol. 38(2), 2005. Continuous recording was used in the majority (55%) of the 168 articles reporting data on free‐operant human behaviors. Three methods for reporting interobserver agreement (exact agreement, block‐by‐block agreement, and time‐window analysis) were employed in more than 10 of the articles that reported continuous recording. Having identified these currently popular agreement computation algorithms, we explain them to assist researchers, software writers, and other consumers of JABA articles.     

A comparison of preference‐assessment methods

In Study 1, we evaluated preference stability across 4 preference‐assessment methods for 6 individuals, 5 of whom had autism spectrum disorder and 1 of whom had traumatic brain injury. We also measured participants’ problem behavior as a corollary measure during all assessment methods. The highest mean correlation coefficients and Kendall rank coefficients of concordance across administrations were observed for the paired‐stimulus and multiple‐stimulus‐without‐replacement methods. Lower correspondence across administrations was observed for the free‐operant and response‐restriction methods. Although differentially higher levels of problem behavior did not occur with a single method, lower levels were consistently observed with the free‐operant method. During Study 2, we evaluated the implications of lower coefficients on reinforcer efficacy by comparing an initially identified and an immediately identified high‐preference stimulus in a reinforcer assessment. Initially identified and immediately identified high‐preference stimuli were equally effective reinforcers, suggesting that fluctuations in preference do not necessarily affect reinforcer efficacy in practice.     

A multi-user on-line 8080 microcomputer system

A laboratory control system based upon the Imsai 8080 microcomputer is described. This system is capable of programming separate events in each of five animal operant chambers and recording the resulting behavioral data. The interface between the computer and the chambers is compatible with the 28-V dc nature of these chambers and various peripheral devices, such as cumulative recorders. At present, system software is based on the 8080 assembly language, while the BASIC language is used for data analysis. Cost considerations and comparisons with minicomputers are discussed.     

Operant Reward Learning in Aplysia

Anticipating the future has a decided evolutionary advantage, and researchers have found many evolutionarily conserved mechanisms by which humans and animals learn to predict future events. Researchers often study such learned behavior using conditioning experiments. The marine snail Aplysia has been at the forefront of research into the cellular and molecular mechanisms of classical conditioning. Recently, Aplysia has also gained a reputation as a valuable model system for operant reward learning. Its feeding behavior can be operantly conditioned in the intact animal as well as in reduced preparations of the nervous system. The reward signal relies on dopamine transmission and acts in conjunction with activity in an identified neuron (B51) to bring about operant memory.     

A Commodore 64-based interface system for the operant laboratory

A system of interfaces for the Commodore 64 (C-64) microcomputer for use in the operant laboratory is described. This system frees the experimenter from limitations on the number of I/O lines available on the user port of the C-64 and offers the control of operant chambers for a low cost. Subroutines in machine code to control the interfaces, offering millisecond timing of external events, are presented. A sample BASIC program demonstrates how the subroutines are called from BASIC to run a simple discrimination experiment.     

Context specificity of operant discriminative performance in pigeons: II. Necessary and sufficient conditions

Six experiments were performed to explore the necessary and sufficient conditions for producing context specificity of discriminative operant performance in pigeons. In Experiment 1, pigeons learned a successive discrimination (red S+/blue S−) in two chambers that had a particular odor present and between which they were frequently switched. The birds subsequently learned the reversal (blue S+/ red S−) in one of these chambers with a different odor present. When switched to the alternative chamber, although the odor and the reinforcement contingency were still appropriate to the reversal, performance appropriate to the original discrimination recurred in subjects for which the houselights were on during training and testing but not for those for which the houselights were off. This indicated the importance of visual contextual cues in producing context specificity. Experiment 2 showed that the frequent switching between boxes in initial training was of no consequence, presumably because the apparatus cues were highly salient to the subjects. Experiment 3 showed significantly less context specificity when odor cues were omitted. Experiment 4 showed that simply using a different reinforced stimulus in each phase of training was ineffective in producing context specificity. Experiment 5 showed that the generalization test procedure used in Experiment 4 was sensitive to context specificity when discrimination-reversal training was used with different odors in the two training phases. Experiment 6 replicated the results of Experiment 4, but then showed that when different odors accompanied the two training phases, context specificity was obtained with the single-stimulus paradigm. Thus in both single-stimulus and discrimination-reversal paradigms, redundant odor cues potentiated learning about apparatus cues.     

The effect of the size of the test environment on behavior under two temporally defined schedules

The effect of the size of the floor area of the operant test chamber on behavior was tested using a standard-size test chamber and a test chamber with one-fourth of the floor area of the standard chamber. Two groups of pigeons were tested under a differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate 15-sec schedule or a variable-interval 60-sec schedule. Both groups of pigeons had higher response rates while in the smaller floor area. Pigeons under the differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate schedule also showed a decrease in rate of reinforcement, an increase in ratio of responses to reinforcements, and an alteration in interresponse-time-per-opportunity distributions when tested in the reduced floor-area condition. These effects are similar to those found under physical restraint, indicating that amount of floor space available for locomotion interacts with schedule behavior and that physical restraint may be regarded as the lower limiting value of amount of floor area available for locomotion.