Association for Behavior Analysis International

Several studies have looked at ways to mitigate resurgence of a target behavior by manipulating dimensions of reinforcement for an alternative behavior. To date, only one study has examined differences in resurgence following different magnitudes of reinforcement for the alternative behavior, and only one study has addressed resurgence in an academic setting. The current study evaluated resurgence of a target academic response when all responses were placed on extinction subsequent to a phase of high- or low-magnitude reinforcement for an alternative response. Four fourth-grade students without a diagnosis participated and their rate of problem completion was measured across sessions. In Phase 1, students were reinforced for completing addition problems. In Phase 2, students were reinforced for completing subtraction problems, but not addition problems. Finally in Phase 3A/3B, reinforcement was not provided for any response (i.e., extinction). In Phase 3A, extinction was not signaled and resurgence was only observed in 3 of the 4 students. In Phase 3B, extinction was signaled and resurgence of the target response occurred for all four participants, with variable levels across the high- and low-magnitude conditions. Implications and directions for future research will be discussed.

Meaningful stimuli are, by definition, pre-experimentally related to other stimuli. Some authors have suggested that training relations between a meaningful stimulus and a member of an equivalence class could produce the merge of the experimental class with a pre-experimentally established class. Here, two experiments compared the effects of meaningful and meaningless words on the merger of classes. In both experiments, adults were trained on AB and AC relations for the emergence of three 3-member equivalence classes with abstract stimuli. Then, they were trained on DA relations and tested for the inclusion of D and a set of nine meaning-related pictures in the class. In Experiment 1 (N = 22), D1 and D2 were meaningful written words, and D3 was a written pseudo word. In Experiment 2 (N = 13), for two groups, D1, D2, and D3 were meaningful words; for another group, D1, D2, and D3 were meaningless words. In both experiments, only meaningful words produced the merger of the ABC and the meaning-related stimulus classes. These results support the notion that meaningful stimuli are members of pre-experimental classes and that using meaningful-stimulus in equivalence tasks can produce the merge of the experimental and the extra-experimental classes.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate if the behavioral processes of probability and social discounting could predict people’s compliance with the protective measures recommended during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 116 adults living in Brazil completed an online survey composed of a probability discounting questionnaire (PDQ), a social discounting questionnaire (SDQ), and a 10-question assessment of how often they complied with the health authorities’ recommendations (e.g., wash the hands frequently, practice social distancing, stay at home as much as possible, wear a mask when in public). Only the participants who showed higher or lowered compliance with the protective measures were included in the final analyses. Results revealed that the PDQ and SDQ responses could predict people’s compliance with the protective measures recommended by the health authorities. Participants who showed low compliancewere more likely to perform risk choices in the PDQ than high-compliant ones. To a lesser extent, participants who showed high compliance were more prone to present cooperative choices in the SDQ, compared to low-compliant participants. These results suggest that probability and social discounting processes can play an essential role in the self-protective and cooperative decisions people made during a global health emergency, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Six pigeons pecked on the food key to receive reinforcers on a two-component mixed schedule (VI 30 s/EXT), or on the observing key to change the mixed schedule to a multiple schedule by sometimes producing an observing stimulus (S+/S-) that corresponded to the current component in effect. Components alternated irregularly with variable durations and responses within the final 5 s of an EXT component extended the said component. Across conditions we manipulated the duration of the observing stimulus (3.25, 7.5, 15, 30 s). As observing-stimulus duration increased, percentage of session time spent as a multiple schedule increased and fewer observing stimuli were produced. What remained invariant across conditions was the degree of differential responding during the mixed stimulus. Number of successive food-key responses since offset of observing stimuli showed that observing stimuli (S+/S-) produced differential responding on the food key during the mixed stimulus. Consequently, producing observing stimuli resulted in better discrimination during the mixed stimulus compared to a mixed schedule without such an opportunity. These findings show that observing stimuli were produced to an extent that affords greater discrimination of an uncertain environment regardless of the duration of these observing stimuli.

Associating meaningless trigrams (CS) with a positively valenced attribute (US) may influence appetite-associated motivational systems, such as increased saliva production, regardless of whether the former (CS-US) relation is consciously tractable. We test this claim in the present study, where we expose three groups of Brazilian undergraduates (N = 69) to a subliminal conditioning protocol. The procedure involved presenting eating-related activities (CS) or their scrambled counterparts (non-CS) at subliminal visual thresholds, followed by visible positive or neutral attributes (US). A free-selection visibility check confirmed that no participant identified the subliminal stimuli during the conditioning task. For the group who associated eating activities with the positive US, saliva production increased significantly as predicted. Outcomes across explicit and implicit evaluations were statistically inconclusive, but Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations suggested conditioning effects were somewhat likely. Reliable saliva augmentation, coupled with inconclusive evaluation outcomes, illustrates how affective CS-US information can influence motivational responses with minimal deliberative influence.

The present study was designed to determine whether the repeated reversal procedure that has been used to demonstrate the formation of functional classes in pigeons and sea lions could be adapted for rats using olfactory stimuli. Rats were exposed to simple discrimination training with responding reinforced on an FI 5-s schedule for six odors (Set 1 positive) and extinction for a different set of six odors (Set 2 negative). When responding was well differentiated, the discriminations were reversed (i.e., Set 2 positive, Set 1 negative). Discrimination reversals were repeatedly performed and performances were on the initial session of a reversal were analyzed to determine whether was contacting the reversed contingencies with some set members would transfer without direct training to other set members. We found transfer in most rats tested, but mainly after exposure to the changed contingencies with five of the set members. These data provide some of the first evidence of functional class formation in rats.