Invariants and Information Pickup in The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems: Implications for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior

ABSTRACT

Although Gibson focused his agenda on the study of perception and Skinner on learning as contingencies of reinforcement, they shared a nonrepresentational approach. We propose that the ecological concept of invariants developed in Gibson's book The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966) could underlie Skinner's notion of contingencies of reinforcement as environmental opportunities for behaving. The proposal is divided in 3 parts: the concept of stimulus for perception, the role of the notion of invariants in the operant contingency, and the information for perception and behavior. We conclude that approximating contingencies of reinforcement as instances of environmental invariants can be fruitful for studying a number of phenomena within the context of operant conditioning.     

Affirming Control by Multiple Reinforcers via Progressive Treatment Analysis

It is common to isolate reinforcement contingencies across several test conditions in functional analyses of problem behavior; however, synthesizing all reinforcement contingencies in a single test condition may also have merit and even be necessary in some cases. Following a differentiated functional analysis, which relied on an interview‐informed synthesized test condition, functional communication training (FCT) was applied across the three suspected contingencies of reinforcement, partly in an attempt to understand the relevance of each. Communication responses were acquired for all three reinforcers, and problem behavior ceased only when all contingencies were addressed via FCT, suggesting that problem behavior was controlled by multiple contingencies of reinforcement. These analyses suggest that control by multiple contingencies of reinforcement can be understood during the treatment development process following a highly efficient functional analysis. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimistic biases in observational learning of value

Action-outcome contingencies can be learnt either by active trial-and-error, or vicariously, by observing the outcomes of actions performed by others. The extant literature is ambiguous as to which of these modes of learning is more effective, as controlled comparisons of operant and observational learning are rare. Here, we contrasted human operant and observational value learning, assessing implicit and explicit measures of learning from positive and negative reinforcement. Compared to direct operant learning, we show observational learning is associated with an optimistic over-valuation of low-value options, a pattern apparent both in participants’ choice preferences and their explicit post-hoc estimates of value. Learning of higher value options showed no such bias. We suggest that such a bias can be explained as a tendency for optimistic underestimation of the chance of experiencing negative events, an optimism repressed when information is gathered through direct operant learning.     

Human behavioral momentum in a sample of older adults.

Behavioral momentum, the persistence of behavior under altered environmental contingencies, is derived from Newtonian physics and operant psychology. It has relevance to behavior analysis in terms of shaping strong behaviors and ensuring effective relapse prevention strategies in behavior modification and therapy. The authors investigated whether changing the operant schedule contingencies affects the responses of older humans to different stimuli when reinforcement density is systematically manipulated. Fifteen older adults participated in a computer study in which each of 2 keys in a baseline condition was associated with the same schedule of reinforcement and multiple variable intervals; the only difference was that 1 reinforcer was 10 times larger than the other. After 6 sessions, the authors changed the contingency schedule to either an extinction condition, a variable-time schedule, or a different variable-interval schedule, to assess how participants' responses persisted when reinforcement contingencies were systematically changed. The results were consistent with the predictions of behavioral momentum. The participants not only biased their responses in favor of the more densely reinforcing key, but when contingencies changed, they showed significantly biased responses. Results supported the conclusion that healthy older adults allocate their behaviors in a manner very sensitive to training stimuli conditions; consistent with the basic principles of behavioral momentum, they show a degree of resistance to change in their behaviors when the behavioral contingencies are altered.     

Effect of signaled reinforcement on response variability

Three experiments examined the effect of signaling reinforcement on rats' lever pressing on contingencies that reinforced variable responding to extend the exploration of signaled reinforcement to a schedule that has previously not been examined in this respect. In Experiment 1, rats responding on a lag-8 variability schedule with signaled reinforcement displayed greater levels of variability (U values) than rats on the same schedule lacking a reinforcement signal. In Experiment 2, rats responding on a differential reinforcement of least frequent responses schedule also displayed greater operant variability with a signal for reinforcement compared with rats without a reinforcement signal. In Experiment 3, a reinforcement signal decreased the variability of a response sequence when there was no variability requirement. These results offer empirical corroboration that operant variability responds to manipulations in the same manner as do other forms of operant response and that a reinforcement signal facilitates the emission of the required operant.     

Fixed interval schedules and delay of reinforcement

In a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement the only responses to be reinforced are those made when a certain time interval has elapsed since the previous reinforcement. The behaviour of three rats on such a schedule was compared with their behaviour on a schedule where a response made at any time during the interval was reinforced by setting up a reward which was delivered when the interval had elapsed. Response rates were higher in the ordinary fixed interval schedule than in its modified version, and it is argued that this rules out attempts to explain the maintenance of fixed interval performance by delayed reinforcement. Despite the clear difference in response rates, there was considerable similarity between the post-reinforcement pauses developed in the two schedules, and this suggests that pausing is influenced more by temporal than by response contingencies.     

Applied behavior analysis: New directions from the laboratory

Applied behavior analysis began when laboratory based principles were extended to humans inorder to change socially significant behavior. Recent laboratory findings may have applied relevance; however, the majority of basic researchers have not clearly communicated the practical implications of their work. The present paper samples some of the new findings and attempts to demonstrate their applied importance. Schedule-induced behavior which occurs as a by-product of contingencies of reinforcement is discussed. Possible difficulties in treatment and management of induced behaviors are considered. Next, the correlation-based law of effect and the implications of relative reinforcement are explored in terms of applied examples. Relative rate of reinforcement is then extended to the literature dealing with concurrent operants. Concurrent operant models may describe human behavior of applied importance, and several techniques for modification of problem behavior are suggested. As a final concern, the paper discusses several new paradigms. While the practical importance of these models is not clear at the moment, it may be that new practical advantages will soon arise. Thus, it is argued that basic research continues to be of theoretical and practical importance to applied behavior analysis.     

Learning to vary and varying to learn

We compared two sources of behavior variability: decreased levels of reinforcement and reinforcement contingent on variability itself. In Experiment 1, four groups of rats were reinforced for different levels of response-sequence variability: one group was reinforced for low variability, two groups were reinforced for intermediate levels, and one group was reinforced for very high variability. All of the groups experienced three different reinforcement frequencies for meeting their respective variability contingencies. Results showed that reinforcement contingencies controlled response variability more than did reinforcement frequencies. Experiment 2 showed that only those animals concurrently reinforced for high variability acquired a difficult-to-learn sequence; animals reinforced for low variability learned little or not at all. Variability was therefore controlled mainly by reinforcement contingencies, and learning increased as a function of levels of baseline variability. Knowledge of these relationships may be helpful to those who attempt to condition operant responses.     

Facial expression of pain: an evolutionary account

This paper proposes that human expression of pain in the presence or absence of caregivers, and the detection of pain by observers, arises from evolved propensities. The function of pain is to demand attention and prioritise escape, recovery, and healing; where others can help achieve these goals, effective communication of pain is required. Evidence is reviewed of a distinct and specific facial expression of pain from infancy to old age, consistent across stimuli, and recognizable as pain by observers. Voluntary control over amplitude is incomplete, and observers can better detect pain that the individual attempts to suppress rather than amplify or simulate. In many clinical and experimental settings, the facial expression of pain is incorporated with verbal and nonverbal vocal activity, posture, and movement in an overall category of pain behaviour. This is assumed by clinicians to be under operant control of social contingencies such as sympathy, caregiving, and practical help; thus, strong facial expression is presumed to constitute and attempt to manipulate these contingencies by amplification of the normal expression. Operant formulations support skepticism about the presence or extent of pain, judgments of malingering, and sometimes the withholding of caregiving and help. To the extent that pain expression is influenced by environmental contingencies, however, "amplification" could equally plausibly constitute the release of suppression according to evolved contingent propensities that guide behaviour. Pain has been largely neglected in the evolutionary literature and the literature on expression of emotion, but an evolutionary account can generate improved assessment of pain and reactions to it.     

Incentive processes and the peak shift

Intradimensional operant discrimination schedules were employed, which eliminated the covariation of response and reinforcement rates that are found on most operant baselines. In Phase 1, one keylight (S(1)) controlled an increase in pigeons' treadle pressing, relative to another keylight (S(2)), while being correlated with a decrease in frequency of reinforcement. In Phase 2 both treadle pressing and reinforcement increased in the presence of one keylight, relative to the second. In Phase 1 the relatively flat treadle-press generalization gradients peaked at S(1), whereas the peaks of those in Phase 2 were shifted from S(1) in a direction away from S(2). It was postulated that these positive and negative stimulus-reinforcement contingencies influence the likelihood of obtaining peak shift through the operation of a classically conditioned "central motive state." How response-reinforcement and stimulus-reinforcement contingencies might contribute to the development of inhibitory effects of S(2) is discussed. Autoshaped key pecking also was produced by these procedures. During manipulations of stimuli, the gradients obtained for autoshaped key pecking were narrow and sharply peaked at the food-correlated stimulus (S(2)) in Phase 1. This failure to obtain peak shift for an elicited response suggests a difference in discriminative processes operating in classical and instrumental learning.     

Differences in the effect of Pavlovian contingencies upon behavioral momentum using auditory versus visual stimuli.

We examined the role of Pavlovian and operant relations in behavioral momentum by arranging response-contingent alternative reinforcement in one component of a three-component multiple concurrent schedule with rats. This permitted the simultaneous arranging of different response-reinforcer (operant) and stimulus-reinforcer (Pavlovian) contingencies during three baseline conditions. Auditory or visual stimuli were used as discriminative stimuli within the multiple concurrent schedules. Resistance to change of a target response was assessed during a single session of extinction following each baseline condition. The rate of the target response during baseline varied inversely with the rate of response-contingent reinforcement derived from a concurrent source, regardless of whether the discriminative stimuli were auditory or visual. Resistance to change of the target response, however, did depend on the discriminative-stimulus modality. Resistance to change in the presence of visual stimuli was a positive function of the Pavlovian contingencies, whereas resistance to change was unrelated to either the operant or Pavlovian contingencies when the discriminative stimuli were auditory. Stimulus salience may be a factor in determining the differences in resistance to change across sensory modalities.     

Operant conditioning of autogrooming in vervet monkeys: Cercopithecus aethiops

Vervet monkeys received food reinforcement contingent on autogrooming. Experiment 1 reinforced grooming on a schedule of increasing intermittency and grooming increased in frequency and duration; with only pauses reinforced, grooming decreased in frequency and duration. Experiment 2 demonstrated differentiation of operant autogrooming; in each session a different single form of grooming was reinforced (for example, grooming the tail only), and that form increased in frequency while other forms became less frequent. In Experiment 3 scratching was succesfully conditioned with a method that selectively reinforced variety in behavior; reinforcement was contingent on a shift in scratching form. In Experiment 4, with no contingencies on grooming, a prefood stimulus did not increase autogrooming whether or not grooming had previously resulted in contingent reinforcement. The form of conditioned autogrooming resembled the form of unconditioned autogrooming. The discussion suggests how reinforcement principles can account for changes in the topography of operant behavior.     

A CLASSIFICATION SCHEME OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF REINFORCEMENT WITHIN GROUP OPERANT SYSTEMS1

Many different reinforcement contingencies are found in group operant systems, such as token economies and point systems. Some systems use group contingencies in which the reinforcement of any one participant may depend on the behavior of some other group member. Other programs are individual, in that participants earn reinforcers dependent only on their own behavior. The various possible arrangements of people and their response requirements are labelled “social conditions of reinforcement” in this paper. Previous attempts at classification have failed to categorize the variety of social conditions of reinforcement. In addition, some conditions that may produce behaviorally different effects have not been separated. The present paper classifies the social conditions of reinforcement found in applied programs in a three-dimensional scheme. The efficacy of the three major dimensions—reinforcing agent, recipient response requirement, and group response requirement—is supported by clinical and research data. The reinforcing agent dimension refers to the person(s) who dispenses reinforcers to group members. This major dimension is further subdivided: one or several agents may be either designated or nondesignated. Recipients are the group members who receive reinforcement. This dimension is also subdivided: one or several recipients in a social condition of reinforcement may obtain reinforcers either contingently or noncontingently. The group response requirement is a criterion that must be satisfied before any group participant is eligible for reinforcement. Some systems have no group requirement, and others have a group requirement that must be met by some designated or nondesignated participant(s). Supportive references and examples are given in the explanation of each dimension and subdimension. The behavioral impact of the various categories is emphasized. For all major dimensions, applied implications and research suggestions are discussed. Concluding remarks center on the utility of the present scheme, the classification of operant procedures other than positive reinforcement, and both theoretical and applied issues requiring further study (e.g., the long-term effects of participation in group contingencies).     

Operant modulation of low-level attributes of rule-governed behavior by nonverbal contingencies

A low-level and nonsalient attribute of behavior (i.e., speed of pressing) was subjected to differential nonverbal operant reinforcement when rules governed a high-level attribute of that behavior (i.e., counting by means of key presses). Unknown to the subjects, reinforcers depended on reduced (slow group) or increased (fast group) speed of pressing rather than on the correct number of presses. The reinforced attribute was modulated according to the arranged speed contingencies independently of the instructed task and independently of subjects' awareness of the critical contingency. A control group receiving random reinforcers demonstrated no systematic speed changes. Possible mechanisms related to behavior changes of this type were examined and discussed, and it was concluded that the behavior changes observed in this situation could be attributed to operant conditioning. The results substantiate the assumption that nonverbal operant contingencies may modulate low-level and nonsalient attributes of rule-governed behavior.     

Influence of Reinforcement Contingencies and Cognitive Styles on Affective Responses: An Examination of Rolls' Theory of Emotion in the Context of Consumer Choice

This paper examines Rolls' (2005 ) propositions that emotional responses can be systematically related to environmental contingencies and that individual differences are related to emotional responses. In addition, consumer situations, defined functionally in terms of the reinforcement pattern they uniquely portray, as proposed by the behavioral perspective model (BPM) of consumer choice are predictably associated with patterns of self‐reported pleasure, arousal, and dominance ( Mehrabian & Russell, 1974 ). Rolls' argument that individual differences influence conditionality and emotionality is examined via hypotheses from the theory of adaptive–innovative cognitive style ( Kirton, 1976, 2003 ). The results confirm that affective response to consumer environments is consistently predicted by the modeled pattern of operant contingencies, but not the expected relationship between cognitive styles and affective responses.     

Functional analysis and intervention of perseverative speech in students with high-functioning autism and related neurodevelopmental disabilities

Although perseverative speech is a common characteristic of individuals with high-functioning neurodevelopmental disabilities, little is known about the operant functions of these verbalizations. We conducted analogue functional analyses of perseverative speech for 2 students using reinforcement contingencies that included alone, attention, control, escape, and tangible conditions. Results showed the following patterns: attention only (Charlotte) or multiply determined including an attention function (Paul). We then tested an intervention for perseverative speech maintained by social positive reinforcement that included differential reinforcement of alternative behavior and extinction of perseverative speech for 1 participant. The intervention reduced perseverative speech, but did not increase appropriate speech until we added a prompting component. We then replicated this three-component intervention with Paul. The results showed moderate to high decreases in levels of perseverative speech and increased appropriate verbalizations in both cases. The results systematically replicated the interventions of previous studies by adding a prompting component to the intervention.     

Human sensitivity to reinforcement: A comment on Kollins, Newland, and Critchfield's (1997) quantitative literature review

In a quantitative review of human operant experiments, Kollins, Newland, and Critchfield (1997) found that humans are less sensitive to reinforcement contingencies than nonhumans are. Human performances were not as consistent with the matching law, and they were more variable from subject to subject. Some of the variables correlated with reduced human sensitivity were surprising. These included collection of the data under more controlled conditions (laboratory rather than naturalistic settings), and inclusions of discriminative stimuli correlated with alternative sources of reinforcement. We discuss these unexpected findings in the light of criticisms that have been leveled against meta-analytic literature reviews (e.g., the wisdom of grouping studies with widely diverse methods), and we suggest ways of improving future analyses of the behavior-analytic literature.     

A selectionist approach to reinforcement.

We describe a principle of reinforcement that draws upon experimental analyses of both behavior and the neurosciences. Some of the implications of this principle for the interpretation of behavior are explored using computer simulations of adaptive neural networks. The simulations indicate that a single reinforcement principle, implemented in a biologically plausible neural network, is competent to produce as its cumulative product networks that can mediate a substantial number of the phenomena generated by respondent and operant contingencies. These include acquisition, extinction, reacquisition, conditioned reinforcement, and stimulus-control phenomena such as blocking and stimulus discrimination. The characteristics of the environment-behavior relations selected by the action of reinforcement on the connectivity of the network are consistent with behavior-analytic formulations: Operants are not elicited but, instead, the network permits them to be guided by the environment. Moreover, the guidance of behavior is context dependent, with the pathways activated by a stimulus determined in part by what other stimuli are acting on the network at that moment. In keeping with a selectionist approach to complexity, the cumulative effects of relatively simple reinforcement processes give promise of simulating the complex behavior of living organisms when acting upon adaptive neural networks.     

Short-term memory in the pigeon: the previously reinforced response

Eighteen pigeons served in a discrete-trials short-term memory experiment in which the reinforcement probability for a peck on one of two keys depended on the response reinforced on the previous trial: either the probability of reinforcement on a trial was 0.8 for the same response reinforced on the previous trial and was 0.2 for the other response (Group A), or, it was 0 or 0.2 for the same response and 1.0 or 0.8 for the other response (Group B). A correction procedure ensured that over all trials reinforcement was distributed equally across the left and right keys. The optimal strategy was either a winstay, lose-shift strategy (Group A) or a win-shift, lose-stay strategy (Group B). The retention interval, that is the intertrial interval, was varied. The average probability of choosing the optimal alternative reinforced 80% of the time was 0.96, 0.84, and 0.74 after delays of 2.5, 4.0, and 6.0 sec, respectively for Group A, and was 0.87, 0.81, and 0.55 after delays of 2.5, 4.0, and 6.0 sec, respectively, for Group B. This outcome is consistent with the view that behavior approximated the optimal response strategy but only to an extent permitted by a subject's short-term memory for the cue correlated with reinforcement, that is, its own most-recently reinforced response. More generally, this result is consistent with “molecular” analyses of operant behavior, but is inconsistent with traditional “molar” analyses holding that fundamental controlling relations may be discovered by routinely averaging over different local reinforcement contingencies. In the present experiment, the molar results were byproducts of local reinforcement contingencies involving an organism's own recent behavior.     

Violations of stochastic transitivity on concurrent chains: Implications for theories of choice

The concurrent-chains procedure has been used to measure how choice depends on various aspects of reinforcement, such as its delay and its magnitude. Navarick and Fantino (1972, 1974, 1975) have found that choice in this procedure can violate the condition of stochastic transitivity that is required if a unidimensional scale for reinforcements is to be possible. It is shown in this paper that two simple unidimensional models of choice on concurrent chains can produce violations of stochastic transitivity. It is argued that such violations may result from the complex contingencies of the concurrent-chains procedure.