Association for Behavior Analysis International

Bridging the basic and applied realms of behavior analysis, translational research seeks to determine the conditions under which basic principles of behavior control the behavior of humans in more typical contexts (e.g., home, school, and community settings), while also suggesting important areas for future basic research. The translational papers in this symposium examine the variables controlling the development, maintenance, and recurrence of target responding. Billie Retzlaff will begin this symposium by sharing the results of a recent translational investigation on the potential for the induction of additional functions of responding following synthesized contingencies of reinforcement. Hank Roane will then present on the role of response variability on the resurgence of problem behavior during challenges to treatment. Brian Greer will then present on strategies to mitigate the resurgence of problem behavior following functional communication training. Finally, Sarah Cowie will present on how reinforcers control behavior due to their ability to signal the immediate future probability of additional reinforcers.

Treatment of challenging behavior in individuals with developmental disabilities often involves withholding reinforcement for problem behavior (i.e., extinction) while simultaneously reinforcing an appropriate alternative behavior (i.e., differential reinforcement). Previous research has demonstrated that if reinforcement of the alternative behavior is reduced or eliminated (i.e., interruption of treatment), resurgence of problem behavior may occur. However, it is also possible that extinction-induced response variability (i.e., emergence of functionally related topographies of behavior) may also occur when reinforcement is withheld for previously reinforced responses. The current study sought to evaluate the occurrence of resurgence of problem behavior and extinction-induced response variability during a human operant arrangement in which an inactive control response was present and during clinical cases in which interruptions to treatment were programmed. Results suggested that resurgence and response variability may have an inverse relation when treatment is interrupted, such that if resurgence of problem behavior occurs, a child is less likely to display response variability and conversely, resurgence of problem behavior may not be as robust when a child engages in greater response variability. Clinical implications regarding the effects of treatment interruptions will be discussed.

The assumption that reinforcers strengthen behavior forms the foundation of many behavior-analytic interventions. However, recent basic research suggests that reinforcers control behavior because of what they signal about events that are likely to occur in the immediate future, rather than because they strengthen the behavior they follow. We extended an experimental paradigm used with non-human animals to study reinforcer control of choice in children. Seven typically developing children and one child diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder played a game where opening one of two drawers would result in a reinforcer. The probability of the next reinforcer being obtained for opening the same drawer as had produced the last reinforcer was varied across conditions. Generally, children chose the drawer more likely to produce the next reinforcer, even on occasions when a different response had been reinforced in the preceding trial. This finding suggests that strengthening may be an unnecessary construct, and that a better understanding of how appetitive consequences control behaviour may be achieved using an alternative framework.

Consumer behavior analysis draws on behavior analysis, behavioral ecology, behavioral economics, and marketing science to further enhance the understanding of all aspects of consumption. New technologies such as in-store analytics, improved eye tracking, customer feedback software tools and targeted, measurable, and interactive digital media are not only changing the face of the retail landscape but are also a relatively untapped opportunity in this discipline. Current activities in the digital marketplace are generating immense amounts of techniques, tools and behavioral data that can offer possibilities for more detailed analyses of consumer-marketing relationships from a behavior analytical viewpoint. In this symposium we will discuss recent theoretical developments and empirical analyses related to how consumers learn to adapt to highly competitive economic environments. The symposium starts with a theoretical paper on the relevance of consumer behavior analysis to digital marketing in the context of the Behavioral Perspective Model. The second paper explores the use of digital technology in scrutinizing in-store customer foraging in its natural surroundings focusing on key customer touch-points. The third study investigates the impact of online customer ratings on online hotel booking using the concept of probability discounting. The final paper uses behavioral conjoint as a methodology to study consumer trade-offs and reinforcement value maximization in online retailing.

The paper discusses the need for a thorough understanding of consumer choice of a product carrying equipment (e.g. cart, basket or nothing) as a key customer touch-point at the beginning of a customer journey in grocery retailing. A four-term contingency framework with conversion rate modeling was used, and the data consisted of actual choice behavior detected through video-surveillance. In-store antecedents such as consumers' shopping goals and carrying equipment positioning were analyzed and manipulated while random consumers were observed individually from the point they entered the store to all the way to their exit. The measurements involved consequences of different in-store antecedents (goals and equipment) on in-store behaviors such as walking speed, number of purchases per minute, time spent on different zones (e.g., in the fruit section) and the proportion of healthy food in the total shopping. The data was analyzed using a Shopper Flow Tracking System where the software is designed both to give automatic data on shopper behavior and to assist human observers in tracking individual shopping trips. We discuss behavioral classifications, methodology, validity and implications related to the data from the consumer tracking efforts.

Human-operant experiments will be presented in which rule-governed behavior, resistance to change and relapse were assessed. Alessandri and colleagues studied the effects of instructions and reinforcement value on behavior under negative-reinforcement schedules and extinction. Rule following affected responding (i.e., persisting or not under extinction); additionally, rule following was affected by reinforcement value. Abreu-Rodrigues and Pontes assessed the effects of three variables on the relapse of response sequences under a resurgence procedure: the sequence's level of difficulty (easy and difficult), the context of test (extinction and variation) and the number of responses per sequence (three and five). Easy sequences reappeared more often than difficult ones, the reappearance of the target sequence was more frequent under extinction than under variation, and the reappearance of the target sequence varied inversely with the number of responses per sequence. Finally, Baia and colleagues studied resistance to change and relapse under an ABA-renewal procedure and the relations between behavioral and physiological measures under this procedure. Renewal occurred generally, and was a function of reinforcement rates in a training phase. These experiments highlight procedural aspects in the analysis of human-operant behavior and establish a context to assess the generality of findings obtained previously in experiments with nonhumans.

In the laboratory, human behavior can be controlled by contingencies of reinforcement but also by instructions and related social aspects of the experiment. Two experiments were conducted to further investigate the relative effects of these variables on behavior maintained by negative-reinforcement schedules. In each experiment, participants were required to press a force cell with high force (i.e., establishing operation). They could press a key to produce timeouts from this force requirement. In Experiment 1, after reinforcement training, participants in two different groups were exposed to extinction. The groups were exposed to opposite rules regarding the experimenter's eectations about the participants continuing or not to respond during extinction. Rule following was observed for participants in each group. In Experiment 2, we investigated the effects of reinforcement value on instruction following under negative-reinforcement schedules similar to those in Experiment 1. Differential levels of force (high vs. low) were required across conditions in Baseline and Test phases. Before the Test phase, each participant was told that the experimenter expected a �decrease in the number of timeouts�. Results showed a decrease in timeouts for each participant, under each level of force, but this decrease was higher in the low- than in the high-force condition

This study investigated the effects of three variables upon the reappearance of response sequences: difficulty level of the sequence (easy and difficult), context of test (extinction and variation) and number of responses per sequence (three and five) in two experiments. In the Training Phase, an easy sequence (S1) was reinforced for half of the participants and a difficulty sequence for the other half. In the Elimination Phase, S1 did not produce reinforcers while an alternative sequence (S2) was reinforced. In the Testing Phase, S1 and S2 were under extinction. However, for half of the participants trained with the easy (or difficult) S1, there were no reinforcers for the non-target sequences, and for the other half, non-target sequences produced reinforcers according to a variation contingency. Five- and three-response sequences were investigated in Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. Easy sequences reappeared more often than difficult sequences, the reappearance of the target sequence was more frequent under extinction than under variation, and the reappearance of the target sequence varied inversely with the number of responses per sequence. The reappearance of the target sequence was not conceptualized as resurgence as long as its frequency was lower than that of the control sequences.