Conjugate reinforcement: a brief review and suggestions for applications to the assessment of automatically reinforced behavior

Procedures involving conjugate reinforcement have been used extensively by researchers in developmental psychology, but sparingly by behavior analysts. Based on this trend, this paper calls for a re‐examination of conjugate reinforcement as a tool for analyzing automatically reinforced behavior. To this end, studies involving popular conjugate reinforcement preparations are briefly reviewed to highlight the impact of conjugate reinforcement outside of behavior analysis. In addition, results from selected behavior analytic studies are compared to studies involving conjugate reinforcement procedures. Throughout the review, recommendations for extending conjugate reinforcement preparations to the assessment of automatically reinforced behavior are provided. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.