Hyperbolic modeling and assessment of hypothetical health behaviors during a viral outbreak using crowdsourced samples

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to investigate factors related to public response to public health measures, which could help better prepare implementation of similar measures for inevitable future pandemics. To understand individual and environmental factors that influence likelihood in engaging in personal and public health measures, three crowdsourced convenience samples from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) completed likelihood-discounting tasks of engaging in health behaviors given a variety of hypothetical viral outbreak scenarios. Experiment 1 assessed likelihood of mask wearing for a novel virus. Experiment 2 assessed vaccination likelihood based on efficacy and cost. Experiment 3 assessed likelihood of seeking health care based on number of symptoms and cost of treatment. Volume-based measures and three-dimensional modeling were used to analyze hypothetical decision making. Hypothetical public and personal health participation increased as viral fatality increased and generally followed a hyperbolic function. Public health participation was moderated by political orientation and trust in science, whereas treatment-seeking was only moderated by income. Analytic methods used in this cross-sectional study predicted population-level outcomes that occurred later in the pandemic and can be extended to various health behaviors.     

Using words instead of jumbled characters as stimuli in keyboard training facilitates fluent performance

Keyboarding skill is an important target for adult education programs due to the ubiquity of computers in modern work environments. A previous study showed that novice typists learned key locations quickly but that fluency took a relatively long time to develop. In the present study, novice typists achieved fluent performance in nearly half the time when words rather than jumbled characters were used as stimuli. This suggests that using real words in the keyboarding program can enhance the efficiency of training.     

Combinations of response-dependent and response-independent schedule-correlated stimulus presentation in an observing procedure

Pigeons pecked a response key on a variable-interval (VI) schedule, in which responses produced food every 40 s, on average. These VI periods, or components, alternated in irregular fashion with extinction components in which food was unavailable. Pecks on a second (observing) key briefly produced exteroceptive stimuli (houselight flashes) correlated with the component schedule currently in effect. Across conditions within a phase, the dependency between observing and presentation of the stimuli was decreased systematically while the density of stimulus presentation was held constant. Across phases, the proportion of session time spent in the VI component was adjusted from 0.5 to 0.25, and then to 0.75. Results indicate that rate of observing decreased as the dependency between responses and stimulus presentations was decreased. Further, discriminative control by the schedule-correlated stimuli was systematically weakened as dependency was decreased. Increasing the proportion of session time spent in VI decreased the rate of observing. This effect was additive with the manipulation of the dependency between observing and presentation of the stimuli. Overall, these results show that conditioned reinforcers function similarly to unconditioned reinforcers with respect to response-consequence dependencies, and that stimulus control is enhanced under conditions in which the relevant stimuli are produced by an organism's behavior.     

Discriminated timeout avoidance in pigeons: the roles of added stimuli

Two experiments examined pigeons' postponement of a signaled extinction period, or timeout (TO), from an ongoing schedule of response-dependent food delivery. A concurrent-operant procedure was used in which responses on one (food) key produced food according to a variable-interval schedule and responses on a second (postponement) key delayed the next scheduled TO according to a response-TO (R-TO) interval. A series of response-independent stimulus changes on the food key temporally partitioned the R-TO into three equal segments (S1, S2, and S3). Postponement responses, in addition to postponing TO, also reinstated S1, the stimulus correlated with the greatest temporal distance from TO. In Experiment 1, the R-TO interval was manipulated systematically across blocks of sessions (conditions) at a given ratio of R-TO:TO duration. This R-TO:TO ratio was manipulated across blocks of conditions (phases). Postponement response rates varied inversely with R-TO interval in each phase. Changes in the R-TO:TO ratio did not produce consistent differences except at the 1:10 ratio for some pigeons, where it disrupted postponement responding in some conditions. Most of the postponement responses occurred in the presence of S2 and S3, the stimuli most proximal to TO, whereas most of the food-key responses occurred in S1. In Experiment 2, the R-TO contingencies were systematically manipulated in the presence of the time-correlated stimuli. In one set of conditions, the R-TO contingencies were made either ineffective or less effective in the presence of one or more stimuli. Postponement responses typically shifted to stimuli in the presence of which responses were relatively more effective. Postponement responses decreased markedly when the added stimuli were removed, and then recovered when the stimuli were reinstated. Results from both experiments indicate that the added stimuli in a discriminated TO-avoidance procedure serve predominately discriminative functions, delineating periods during which behavior is maximally effective. The results parallel those obtained in shock-avoidance procedures, providing further evidence that TO functions as an aversive stimulus.     

MODIFICATION OF PERSEVERATIVE RESPONDING THAT INCREASED EARNINGS BUT IMPEDED SKILL ACQUISITION IN A JOB‐SKILLS TRAINING PROGRAM

Adults in a therapeutic workplace working on a computerized keyboarding training program earned vouchers for typing correct characters. Typing technique was evaluated on review steps. Participants could pass the review and earn a bonus, or skip the review and proceed with no bonus. Alternatively, participants could continue practicing on the same step. Participants persistently repeated the same step, which halted progress through the program but allowed them to increase their rate of responding and, as a result, their earnings. Blocking the initiation of practice on review steps and removing payment for practice initiated after prompts (extinction) both produced rapid progress through the program. These results underscore the importance of careful arrangement of the contingencies in adult education programs.