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.     

Functional analysis and operant treatment of food guarding in a pet dog

The present study extended functional analysis (FA) methodology to human-directed resource guarding in a dog in an in-home setting. The subject underwent four conditions including control, attention, escape, and tangible, arranged in a modified FA. The results indicated multiply controlled resource guarding (i.e., escape, attention, and tangible functions). The experimenter then conducted a treatment evaluation involving three function-based treatments in a concurrent multiple baseline design. Resource guarding decreased to zero levels in treatments for each maintaining contingency. Treatment effects were maintained when the subject was tested with an owner, with an untrained handler, a highly preferred treat, in an untrained setting, as well as after 2 weeks in the absence of training. Behavior analytic techniques may hold promise for lasting behavior change for resource guarding in domestic dogs, and should be examined in other populations and with other canine problem behavior.     

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.     

Response cost and the aversive control of human operant behavior

The effects of cost (point-loss per response) upon human avoidance, escape, and avoidance-escape behavior maintained by PLPs (point-loss periods) were investigated. Cost had a marked but differentially suppressive effect upon responding under all schedules. The greatest number of PLPs taken under cost occurred on the escape schedule. In most instances PLPs were more frequent on the avoidance-escape schedule than on the avoidance schedule under cost. Inferior avoidance performance appeared only under cost conditions. Under no-cost, all subjects (Ss) successfully avoided all PLPs after the first hour of conditioning. These results indicate that the development and maintenance of human avoidance and escape behavior may, in part, be dependent upon response cost conditions. Aversive control of human operant behavior may be limited without an adequate specification of response-cost conditions.     

Novelty, stimulus control, and operant variability

Although behavior analysis has been criticized for failure to account for response novelty, many common behavior-analytic concepts and processes (e.g., selectionism, the operant, reinforcement, and stimulus control) assume variability both in the environment and in behavior. The importance of the relation between variability and novelty, particularly for verbal behavior, is discussed, and concepts used to account for novel behavior are examined. Experimental findings also are reviewed that suggest that variability in behavior can come under discriminative control, and these findings are applied to describe novel instances of behavior that may arise during problem solving. We conclude that variations provided and selected by the terms of the three-term contingency are powerful means for understanding novel behavior.     

Differential reinforcement of other-than-vocalization as a control procedure in the conditioning of infant vocalization rate

The purpose of the present study is to demonstrate reinforcement control over infant vocalization rates using a DRO schedule to control for elicitation of social stimulation. Mothers of four 2 1/2- to 3-month-old infants provided social reinforcement for their infants' vocalization under two schedules: continuous reinforcement (CRF) and differential reinforcement of other-than-vocalization (DRO). In a repeated-reversal single-subject experimental design, all four infants produced systematically higher vocalization rates during CRF, even though densities of social stimulation during DRO were equal to or greater than densities provided during CRF. Thus, whatever its elicitation value, social stimulation may reinforce infant vocalization rates.     

Social control by adult preference in operant conditioning with children

During daily sessions four institutionalized retardates and four normal, first-grade children each played a two-choice marble dropping game while an adult experimenter sat beside and watched. When one of two colored lights was presented, two tokens were dispensed as soon as the subject dropped a marble, and when the other light was on, one token was dispensed. During choice trials that were interspersed among single-colored trials the subject was required to choose one of the two different colored holes. After the subject developed a preference for the color that earned two tokens, the experimenter stated a preference for the response that earned only one token (i.e., “I like it better when you put it into the —colored hole.”) Six of the eight subjects immediately switched to the response that earned low magnitude reinforcement when the experimenter stated his preference. Only two subjects switched back to the response that earned high magnitude reinforcement when the experimenter left the room. Subjects complied with the experimenter's preference statement regardless of whether or not it also included a negative component (i.e., what the experimenter did not like). There were no systematic differences between mentally retarded and normal subjects.     

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.     

The effects of d-amphetamine on the temporal control of operant responding in rats during a preshock stimulus.

The operant behavior of six rats was maintained by a random-interval schedule of reinforcement. Three-minute periods of noise were superimposed on this behavior, each period ending with the delivery of an unavoidable shock. Overall rates of responding were generally lower during the periods of noise than in its absence (conditioned suppression). These suppressed response rates also exhibited temporal patterning, with responding becoming less frequent as each noise period progressed. The effects of d-amphetamine on this behavioral baseline were then assessed. In four animals the relative response rates during the noise and in its absence suggested that the drug produced a dose-related decrease in the amount of conditioned suppression. However, this effect was often due to a decrease in the rates of responding in the absence of the preshock stimulus, rather than to an increase in response rates during the stimulus. Temporal patterning in response rates during the preshock stimulus was abolished, an effect that was interpreted in terms of rate-dependent effect of d-amphetamine. This study thus extends rate-dependent analyses of the effects of amphetamines to the patterns of operant behavior that occur during a preshock stimulus, and which have been discussed in terms of the disrupting effects of anxiety on operant behavior.     

The place of the human subject in the operant laboratory

Although laboratory study of human behavior seems an obvious vehicle for strengthening the scientific base of behavior analysis, the place of the human subject within the operant laboratory remains problematic. The prevailing research strategy has been to link principles developed with animals to human affairs, either through interpretation of naturally occurring human behaviors or through application of the principles to the solution of human problems. The paucity of laboratory research on human operant behavior derives from several misconceptions: the possibility that experimental demand characteristics and pre-experimental behavioral dispositions of human subjects contaminate the results; that ethical considerations place undue constraint on research topics and experimental designs; and that uncontrollable variation in subjects' histories and other relevant personal characteristics prevents observation of reliable functional relations. We argue that these problems do not pose insurmountable obstacles to the experimental analysis of human behavior; that adequate methods of control and analysis are available; and that operant techniques, by emphasizing experimentally imposed contingencies, are well suited for the laboratory study of human behavior.     

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.