Association for Behavior Analysis International

Rapp (2008) described conjugate reinforcement schedules to be well utilized by developmental psychology researchers but largely ignored by behavior analysts. Subsequently, he called for behavior analysts to re-assess the potential uses and benefits of these schedules. Only recently, several evaluations of conjugate schedules have emerged in the literature, specifically as a method to manipulate response force. The first two presentations in this symposium will highlight the use of conjugate schedules to assess the preferences of adult human participants. Results of the preference assessments were compared to those of a verbal stimulus without replacement (VMSWO) assessment. The first presentation will demonstrate a method for assessing preference for visual stimuli (i.e., pictures), while the second describes the same for auditory stimuli (i.e., music). The third presentation will show an extension these studies by using auditory stimuli in a conjugate preparation as a consequent variable to control the movement of human participants on a treadmill. Taken together, these presentations describe a novel avenue of research that may have meaningful implications in a translational context.

Behavior analysts, professors, graduate-level practitioners, experimental psychologists, researchers, graduate students

In this study, researchers used a similar conjugate preparation to evaluate how response force changed based on 17 participants’ preferences for auditory stimuli. Researchers used a verbal preference assessment to evaluate each participant’s preference for listening to five genres of music; this process identified high preference (HP) and low preference (LP) music for each participant. Thereafter, researchers exposed each participant to the five music genres in a randomized order while using a force dynamometer to measure their response force to increase auditory clarity of the music. Results indicate (a) about half of the participants’ HP music genres corresponded to the genre for which they exerted the highest mean force and (b) nearly all of the participants’ LP music genres corresponded to the genre for which they exerted the lowest mean force. These findings are consistent with those from Davis et al. (2021) and further support using conjugate preparations for measuring the relative value of some stimulus events.

The utility of programmed schedules of reinforcement lies in their ability to augment or create contingencies that do not occur naturally, and facilitate behavior change when natural contingencies are insufficient. Conjugate schedules arrange relationships between continuous response-stimulus units and may be more useful in those circumstances. We applied conjugate schedules to the study of human ambulation on a treadmill. For 17 participants, music was conditional on their speed falling within a predefined “band” criteria that defined upper and lower limits for music production. We used a changing criterion design using varying band levels and widths, with a final extinction component. As the band criteria changed, the participants’ speed initially adjusted then rapidly conformed to the new band criteria, while extinction induced variability. This first study shows walking or running can be regulated by conjugate schedules and may have useful applications in the domains of exercise and human performance training.