Aversive control of self-injurious behavior in a psychotic boy

Two studies are reported which indicate how quickly and effectively chronic self-injurious behavior was controlled in a 9-yr-old blind psychotic boy. In the first study, the self-injurious responses were punished by contingent withdrawal of human physical contact. In the second study, response-contingent electric shock was employed.     

Varying temporal placement of an added stimulus in a fixed-interval schedule

One paradigm for exploring stimulus effects on behavior is defined for steady state experiments. The paradigm is illustrated by a 60-sec fixed-interval reinforcement schedule wherein a 6-sec light is introduced into each interval. The temporal relation of this stimulus to the reinforcer is the independent variable that is systematically explored. Two experiments studied this temporal relation under two parametric conditions: (a) when the 6-sec light occurs once in each 60-sec interval, (b) when the 6-sec light occurs twice in each interval, the second time always during the 6 sec immediately preceding the reinforcer. Functions are presented showing the effect of the 6-sec light on responding at all points in the fixed-interval.     

Stimulus factors in aversive controls: conditioned suppression after equal training to two stimuli

Pigeons trained to peck a key for food were periodically presented with tones ending with electrical shock until tone presentation consistently suppressed ongoing pecks. Shock was then discontinued and gradients of stimulus generalization were assessed by presenting tones with frequencies above, below, and at the frequencies of those used to develop conditioned suppression. When the training tones had frequencies at 670 and 1500 cps, resulting gradients were bi-modal with peak suppression at 670 and 1500 cps. Of the other test tones, 1000 cps produced the most suppression. When the training tones had frequencies at 450 and 2250 cps, bi-modal gradients were again obtained with peak suppression to the 450 and 2250 cps tones. Of the other test tones, 1000 cps produced the least suppression. These results support the hypothesis that generalized response tendencies summate.