The Effects of Added Reinforcers on Resistance to Change

The fundamental unit of behavior, defined by the discriminated operant, can be reduced to the three-term contingency, which includes an antecedent stimulus, a response, and a reinforcing consequence. Behavioral momentum theory suggests that resistance to disruption (i.e., resistance to change) of operant behavior is governed by the relation between the antecedent stimulus context and the rate of reinforcement within that context (i.e., Pavlovian stimulus-reinforcer relation). Further, behavior momentum theory suggests that resistance to change is independent of the contingency between the response and the reinforcer (i.e., operant response-reinforcer relation). Thus, although additional response-independent food decreases response rates by greatly degrading the response-reinforcer relation, resistance to change is increased because the stimulus-reinforcer relation is enhanced. Inconsistent with behavioral momentum theory, unsignaled delays decrease response rates and resistance to change by slightly degrading the response-reinforcer relation while maintaining equal stimulus-reinforcer relations. Therefore, it is unclear exactly how degrading response-reinforcer relations with response-independent food and delayed reinforcers affects resistance to change because the stimulus-reinforcer relations have generally differed across components and studies. Thus, the present experiment examined whether differentially degrading response-reinforcer relations affects resistance to change while maintaining equal stimulus-reinforcer relations. In the present experiment, a three-component multiple schedule with equal rates of immediate response-dependent reinforcement (15 per hr) was used with pigeons keypecking for food. Equal rates of response-independent food (60 per hr) and 3-s unsignaled delayed reinforcers (60 per hr) were added to two different components in baseline. Thus, the stimulus-reinforcer relations were equal in the two components with added reinforcers and were greater than in the component without added reinforcers . Any differences in resistance to change across the components with added reinforcers should reflect only differences in the response-reinforcer relations because the stimulus-reinforcer relations were equal. Consistent with behavioral-momentum theory, however, resistance to presession feeding, response-independent food presented during intercomponent intervals , and extinction was greater in the components with added reinforcers. There were no differences in resistance to change between the two components with added reinforcers. These results replicate the finding that adding response-independent food increases resistance to change and extends this finding to the effects of added delayed reinforcement

Preface: SQAB 2015: Choice and Consequences

This Special Issue is titled Choice and Consequences. The 38th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Quantitative Analyses of Behavior (SQAB) took place at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center (San Antonio, Texas) May 21st-May 23rd, 2015. Presentations from that conference are reported in this special issue as reviews, theoretical papers or reports of original research. Choice and consequences was the organizing theme for the annual convention, and it was brought together from a variety of research traditions

Quantitative Analyses of Observing and Attending

We review recent experiments examining whether simple models of the allocation and persistence of operant behavior are applicable to attending. In one series of experiments, observing responses of pigeons were used as an analog of attending. Maintenance of observing is often attributed to the conditioned reinforcing effects of a food-correlated stimulus (i.e., S+), so these experiments also may inform our understanding of conditioned reinforcement. Rates and allocations of observing were governed by rates of food or S+ delivery in a manner consistent with the matching law. Resistance to change of observing was well described by behavioral momentum theory only when rates of primary reinforcement in the context were considered. Rate and value of S+ deliveries did not affect resistance to change. Thus, persistence of attending to stimuli appears to be governed by primary reinforcement rates in the training context rather than conditioned reinforcing effects of the stimuli. An additional implication of these findings is that conditioned “reinforcers” may affect response rates through some mechanism other than response-strengthening. In a second series of experiments, we examined the applicability of the matching law to the allocation of attending to the elements of compound stimuli in a divided-attention task. The generalized matching law described performance well, and sensitivity to relative reinforcement varied with sample duration. The bias and sensitivity terms of the generalized matching law may provide measures of stimulus-driven and goal-driven control of divided attention. Further application of theories of operant behavior to performance on attention tasks may provide insights into what is referred to variously as endogenous, top-down, or goal-directed control of attention

Extinction, Relapse, and Behavioral Momentum

Previous experiments on behavioral momentum have shown that relative resistance to extinction of operant behavior in the presence of a discriminative stimulus depends upon the baseline rate or magnitude of reinforcement associated with that stimulus (i.e., the Pavlovian stimulus–reinforcer relation). Recently, we have shown that relapse of operant behavior in reinstatement, resurgence, and context renewal preparations also is a function of baseline stimulus–reinforcer relations. In this paper we present new data examining the role of baseline stimulus–reinforcer relations on resistance to extinction and relapse using a variety of baseline training conditions and relapse operations. Furthermore, we evaluate the adequacy of a behavioral momentum based model in accounting for the results. The model suggests that relapse occurs as a result of a decrease in the disruptive impact of extinction precipitated by a change in circumstances associated with extinction, and that the degree of relapse is a function of the pre-extinction baseline Pavlovian stimulus–reinforcer relation. Across experiments, relative resistance to extinction and relapse were greater in the presence of stimuli associated with more favorable conditions of reinforcement and were positively related to one another. In addition, the model did a good job in accounting for these effects. Thus, behavioral momentum theory may provide a useful quantitative approach for characterizing how differential reinforcement conditions contribute to relapse of operant behavior

Response-Reinforcer Relations and Resistance to Change

Behavioral momentum theory suggests that the relation between a response and a reinforcer (i.e., response–reinforcer relation) governs response rates and the relation between a stimulus and a reinforcer (i.e., stimulus–reinforcer relation) governs resistance to change. The present experiments compared the effects degrading response–reinforcer relations with response-independent or delayed reinforcers on resistance to change in conditions with equal stimulus–reinforcer relations. In Experiment 1, pigeons responded on equal variable-interval schedules of immediate reinforcement in three components of a multiple schedule. Additional response-independent reinforcers were available in one component and additional delayed reinforcers were available in another component. The results showed that resistance to disruption was greater in the components with added reinforcers than without them (i.e., better stimulus–reinforcer relations), but did not differ for the components with added response-independent and delayed reinforcement. In Experiment 2, a component presenting immediate reinforcement alternated with either a component that arranged equal rates of reinforcement with a proportion of those reinforcers being response independent or a component with a proportion of the reinforcers being delayed. Results showed that resistance to disruption tended to be either similar across components or slightly lower when response–reinforcer relations were degraded with either response-independent or delayed reinforcers. These findings suggest that degrading response–reinforcer relations can impact resistance to change, but that impact does not depend on the specific method and is small relative to the effects of the stimulus–reinforcer relation

Behavioral Momentum and Relapse of Extinguished Operant Responding

Previous experiments on behavioral momentum have shown that relative resistance to extinction of operant behavior in the presence of a stimulus depends on the rate of reinforcement associated with that stimulus, even if some of those reinforcers occur independently of the behavior. We present three experiments examining whether the rate of reinforcement in the presence of a stimulus similarly modulates the relative relapse of operant behavior produced by reinstatement, resurgence, and renewal paradigms. During baseline conditions, pigeons responded for food reinforcement on variable-interval 120-sec schedules in alternating periods of exposure to two stimuli arranged by a multiple schedule. Additional response-independent food presentations were also delivered in the presence of one of the multiple-schedule stimuli. Consistent with previous research, baseline response rates were lower in the presence of the stimulus with the added response-independent reinforcement, and relative resistance to extinction was greater in the presence of that stimulus. In addition, following extinction, the relative relapse of responding produced by reinstatement, resurgence, and renewal paradigms was greater in the presence of the stimulus associated with the higher rate of reinforcement. We suggest that a model of extinction from behavioral momentum theory may be useful for understanding these results

SENSITIVITY AND STRENGTH: EFFECTS OF INSTRUCTIONS ON RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

Several research laboratories have found that instructed behavior can be less sensitive to changes in contingencies than shaped behavior. The current experiment examined whether these differences in sensitivity could be related to resistance to change. Two groups of subjects, who were matched on the basis of an initial disruption assessment, were exposed to a variable-interval 30-s schedule of reinforcement with and without a disrupter. The disrupter was a video presentation of a popular television situation comedy. One group received minimal instructions (MI) that told them only that they could earn points exchangeable for money. Each member of the second group received a complete instruction (CI) that described the topography of the target response that was yoked to a MI subject's stable baseline response rate. The response rates under the disruption condition for the CI subjects were more resistant to change than the MI subjects in 74 out o