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NOTES FOR FINAL EXAM BEGIN HERE…

Chapter 6:Aversive Regulation of Behavior

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Classes of Reinforcing and Punishing Stimuli

“Reinforcer” (Appetitive)

Aversive Stimulus

Present Positive

Reinforcement

Positive

Punishment

Remove/

Terminate

Negative

Punishment

Negative

Reinforcement

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Contingencies of Punishment

• Positive punishment occurs when a stimulus is presented following an operant and the rate of response decreases. ex. Spanking

• Negative punishment occurs when a stimulus is removed contingent on a response occurring and the rate of response decreases. ex. Response cost & timeout.

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Contingencies of Punishment

• Premack principle states that the opportunity to engage in a higher frequency behavior will reinforce a lower frequency response.

• Likewise, opportunity to engage in a LOWER frequency behavior will PUNISH a HIGHER frequency response.

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Reinforcement and Punishment• All things being equal, most people respond better

to both immediate reinforcement and immediate punishment. (They learn the contingencies easier this way).

• Most punishments in American society are given for behaviors that are immediately reinforcing, (drug use) while the threat of the punishments for these deeds is delayed and uncertain.

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Reinforcement and Punishment

• Punishment, by itself, tends to be ineffective except for temporarily suppressing undesirable behavior. Only very severe punishment can produce long-term suppression of behavior

• Mild, logical and consistent punishment can be informative and helpful as FEEDBACK

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Effectiveness of Punishment

• Azrin and Holz 1966– Manner of introduction– Immediacy of punishment– Schedule of punishment– Schedule of reinforcement– Motivational variables– Availability of other reinforcers– Punisher as discriminative stimulus

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Making Punishment Most Effective

• Intensity of punishment• Immediacy of punishment

– Punishment is most effective at reducing responses when it is presented shortly after the behavior

• Schedule of punishment– Punishment delivered continuously is more

effective versus intermittently. As the rate of punishment increases the response decreases.

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If using punishment…• If you are punishing a specific behavior, the

reinforcement for that behavior should be discontinued, or at least reduced or made available contingent upon some other appropriate behavior.

• Punishment only teaches one thing: What NOT to do. What kind of teacher would only try to teach by just saying “No!”?

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Motivation and Punishment• When motivation is reduced the punishment is

most effective.• Behavior may be completely suppressed when the

motivation to respond is low.• Research suggests when motivation is increased

after punishment, responding will not recover to prepunishment levels.

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Types of Negative Reinforcement

• Escape

• Avoidance– Discriminated

avoidance– Non-discriminated

avoidance

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Escape vs. Avoidance• Negative reinforcement occurs whenever an

operant results in the removal (ESCAPE) or prevention (AVOIDANCE) of a stimulus and the operant subsequently increases in rate

• In general, people learn to escape before avoidance

• Escape responding is reactive, it is acquired more readily than avoidance responding.

• Avoidance responding is proactive and will only be acquired after a history of escape.

• Avoidance responses are VERY resistant to extinction. Why?

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Types of Avoidance

• If a warning signal precedes the aversive stimulus and a response during this warning stimulus prevents the aversive stimulus delivery, this constitutes discriminated avoidance.

• Discriminated avoidance can be very difficult to acquire, as the warning stimulus comes to be a CS that will elicit respondents that can interfere with the avoidance.

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Nondiscriminated Avoidance• If no warning stimulus precedes the aversive

stimulus which itself occurs periodically, this constitutes nondiscriminated avoidance.

• Many behaviors of clinical interest are avoidance responses (ANXIETY DISORDERS)

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What maintains avoidance responding• After an avoidance response, nothing happens, so why is it

maintained?

• Two factor theory:

• Respondent Conditioning – warning stimulus (CS) acquires aversive effects and elicits fear (CR)

• Operant Conditioning – “running away” during the warning stimulus = reduction of fear (running away is a negatively reinforced operant behavior!)

• Extinction of Avoidance

– avoidance responses are very resistant to extinction because YOU NEVER FACE THE CS AND EXPERIENCE IT WITHOUT THE US!

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Reasons to not use punishment

• Since punishment can be so effective, it is reinforcing for the user, and the user can come to rely on it too much.

• Some critics argue that using punishment in any form will always lead to the person becoming abusive (but this argument has no empirical support)

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Reasons to not use punishment

Seligman– Repeated exposure to unpredictable and

uncontrollable aversive events can have debilitating effects: learned helplessness and depression.

– Other emotional behavior occurs in response to punishment: pain-elicited aggression and counterattack, (person who delivers punishment is feared)

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Learned helplessness

• Person experiences learned helplessness when it is exposed to an aversive stimulus and unable to escape.

• After several pairings of this condition, person gives up and stops attempting to escape.

• When given the opportunity to escape, learned helplessness is demonstrated by not attempting to escape.

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Helplessness and Depression

• Helplessness is involved with and is a model for depression. Depression may arise when a person feels inescapable of abuse.

• Helpless dogs (have previously learned helplessness) which are forced to make a response that escapes shock begin to make that response on their own. Depressed individuals may go through treatment in which they are not allowed to fail.– In this situation, the person may learn to emit

appropriate responses in the presence of aversive events

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Aggression

• Respondent aggression occurs when painful stimuli are presented to two organisms and the organisms attack each other. This may also be known as pain-elicited aggression. The probability of aggression increased as more and more shocks were presented. This result of aggression to aversive stimuli applies to humans

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Operant Aggression

• When one person punishes another’s behavior, the punished individual may retaliate, a strategy known as operant aggression– One way to escape aversive stimulation is to

eliminate/neutralize the person who is delivering it

– Operant aggression is shaped and maintained through negative reinforcement

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Social Disruption• When punishment is used to decrease behavior, the attempt

is usually made to stop a particular response• Hopefully unpunished behavior is not affected, but two

factors work against this– The person delivering the punishment– The Setting

• Both become conditioned aversive stimuli (Save)

• This negative side effect is known as Social Disruption• Also, a social agent who frequently uses punishment

becomes a conditioned punishing stimulus, whose presence can disrupt all ongoing operant behavior

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Coercion and its Fallout

• Murray Sidman, a prominent behavior analyst, has researched the social disruptive effects of aversive control

• Coercion: Use of punishment and the threat of punishment to get others to act as we would like, and to our practice of rewarding people just by letting them escape from our punishments and threats– Involves the basic contingencies of punishment and

negative reinforcement

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Coercion and its Fallout

• “Dropping out” is an escape contingency, and a major social problem– People drop out of education, family, personal and

community responsibility, citizenship, society, and even life

• Sidman notes the common element b/w these forms of conduct is negative reinforcement– Once involved in an aversive situation, a person can get

out by removing themselves from the situation, thus strengthening the behavior of dropping out

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Chapter 7:Part 1: Operant-Respondent

Interrelationships and

Part 2: the Biological Context of Conditioning

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Analysis of Operant/Respondent Interactions

• Respondent procedures are often embedded in the arrangement of operant contingencies.

• Think of 2-factor theory of phobias:– What signals the appearance of the feared stimulus is a

CS for fear (CR) as well as an Sd for avoidance (negatively reinforced operant behavior)

Think about commercials: the sight of a Whopper is a CS when it elicits hunger pangs (CR) but it is also an Sd when it sets the occasion for driving to the Burger King (an operant behavior)

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Sign Tracking• Sign Tracking- refers to approaching a sign that signals a

biologically relevant event• also referred to as autoshaping because of the elicited

approach and subsequent manipulation of the sign stimulus. • How it works: A pigeon typically approaches a lit key that

precedes food delivery. The bird makes pecking movements at the key and eventually pecks the key itself. If food is then delivered, the elicited peck can be operantly reinforced. The peck comes to be more of an operant than an elicited response.

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Sign Tracking in Humans?

• Ken’s silly theory: when we are attracted to another, we tend to approach them (elicited behavior) but, over time, the other person may reinforce our approach behavior with kind words, jokes, hugs, kisses, companionship, etc. and this approach behavior becomes operantly conditioned as well.

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Operant Contingencies and Regulation of Behavior

• Can we reinforce reflexive behavior?– Water deprived dogs reinforced for increasing

saliva flow showed an increase and dogs reinforced for less saliva showed a decrease (Miller and Carmona, 1967).

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Operant Control ofRespondent Behavior

• Obviously we can come to exert “voluntary” control over our reflexes or we couldn’t become toilet trained (duh!)

• Various reflexes can be controlled by operant reinforcement contingent upon occurrences of the response (although these two processes are often “fighting it out”)

• Biofeedback demonstrates that such control can be acquired by everyday people in the “real world”

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Biological Context of Conditioning• principles of learning can be considered universal

principles throughout animal kingdom.• From species to species, though, some differences

occur• This does not invalidate behavioral principles but

tells us that an organism’s physiology and evolutionary history must be taken into consideration in conducting and evaluating learning studies

• That is, different species have different “evolutionarily prepared” responses BUT ALL CAN LEARN!

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Garcia and Koelling (1966) •Group 1: rats drank sweet flavored water •Group 2: rats drank unflavored water accompanied by lights and noises (bright-noisy water)•After the rats drank the water, one half of each group was given electric shock for drinking

1) Flavored water (CS) ---------> Shock (US) 2) Bright, noisy water (CS) ---> Shock (US)

Taste Aversion Learning

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Garcia and Koelling (1966)•The other animals were made ill by injecting them with lithium chloride or by irradiating them with X rays

3) Flavored water (CS) --------> LiCl/X rays (US) 4) Bright, noisy water (CS) ---> LiCl/X rays (US)

•WHO STOPPED DRINKING?• rats that received shock after drinking the bright-noisy water and the ones that were made sick after ingesting the flavored water substantially reduced their fluid intake•Water intake in the other two groups was virtually unaffected (Animals made sick after drinking bright-noisy water and shocked after drinking flavored water did not show a conditioned aversion) WHY?

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Implications: Garcia and Koelling (1966)• During traditional respondent conditioning, the CS and US

typically overlap or are separated by only a few seconds– BUT In Garcia and Koelling’s experiment, the taste CS was

followed much later by the US (drug or X ray)

• We often assume that choice of CS and US is irrelevant for respondent conditioning– BUT Taste and grastrointestinal nausea produced aversion, but

taste and shock did not condition• So…for some stimuli, the animal is GENETICALLY prepared to

make a connection, and for others they may even be contra-prepared• Typically, many CS-US pairings are required to learn, but aversion to

taste often occurs after a single pairing of flavor-illness

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Conditioned taste aversion in humans

• Humans more likely to develop aversion to tastes and smells than sights and sounds, even when we “know” it wasn’t the food that made us ill (sauce d’bearnaise effect).

• Humans on chemotherapy can develop “anticipatory nausea and vomiting” (ANV) to the sight of a doctor, a clinic, the day of chemotherapy, among other stimuli. (All of these are CS’s for the internal nauseating effects of the chemotherapy (US)

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Chapter 9:Choice and Preference

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Choice vs. Preference• From a behavioral view, the analysis of choice is

concerned with the distribution of operant behavior among alternative sources of reinforcement

• When several choices are available, one alternative may be chosen more frequently than others. When this occurs, it is called preference for an alternative source of reinforcement– For example, a person may choose between two food

markets (a large supermarket and the corner store) on the basis of price, location, and variety

– Each time the individual goes to one store rather than the other, he or she is said to choose

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Concurrent Schedules

• In the laboratory, choice and preference are investigated by arranging concurrent schedules of reinforcement– Two or more simple schedules (FR, VR, FI, or VI) simultaneously

available on different response keys

– Each key is associated with a separate schedule of reinforcement, and organism is free to distribute behavior between alternative schedules

– distribution of time and behavior among alternatives is behavioral measure of choice and preference

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Concurrent Schedules

• Concurrent schedules of reinforcement have received considerable research attention, b/c they may be used as an analytical tool for understanding choice and preference

• Simply stated, all other factors being equal, the more reinforcement provided by an alternative, the more time and energy spent on that alternative

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Concurrent Ratio Schedules• With ratio schedules, rate of reinforcement is directly

related to rate of responding (faster one responds, sooner one obtains the next reinforcement).

• With a choice between two (or three response options) a preference develops for response option that produces most frequent reinforcement, (an FR10 would be chosen over an FR50, VR5 over a VR10, etc.)

• This preference assumes that reinforcer quantity and quality are the same for all response options, and that the required response effort is the same for all. Why?

• If response option A operated according to a VR 10 schedule of reinforcement and response option B operated according to an FR 10 schedule, a preference would likely develop for which response option?

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Concurrent Interval Schedules

• On interval schedules, rate of reinforcement is not directly related to rate of responding; on a FI 60 sec schedule, whether the subject emits 1, 10 or 100 responses, the reinforcer will not come any sooner than once every 60 seconds.

• With a choice between two FI schedules, subjects come to predominately spend their time responding on the schedule with the shortest interval, a FI 10 sec schedule will be preferred over a FI 30 sec schedule BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY (see next)

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Concurrent Fixed Interval Schedules• subjects develop a pattern of predominately

responding on the response option with the shortest interval AND periodically switching to respond on the alternative to obtain reinforcement on it before switching back to the shorter interval option.

• A subject will respond predominately on a FI 30 sec schedule (about every 30 sec) and every once in a while (about every 90 sec) switch to respond on a FI 90 sec schedule.

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Concurrent VI VI Schedules• To avoid the regularity of switching that can occur

with concurrent FI schedules, concurrent VI schedules are employed. Here since the passage of time cannot be as accurately discriminated (since the intervals vary) regular switching does not develop as switching will not as likely result in reinforcement.

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Experimental Procedures to Study Choice

• The basic paradigm for investigating choice and preference is now complete. In summary, a researcher interested in behavioral choice should

1. Arrange two or more concurrently available schedules of reinforcement

2. Program interval schedules on each alternative

3. Use variable- rather than fixed-interval schedules

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The Matching Law• In 1961, Richard Herrnstein published an

influential paper that described that distribution of behavior on concurrent schedules of positive reinforcement– He found that pigeons matched relative rates of behavior to

relative rates of reinforcement

– When 90% of the total reinforcement was provided by schedule A (and 10% by schedule B), approximately 90% of the bird’s key pecks were on this schedule

– This relationship is known as the matching law

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TerminologyWhat is relative rate of response? This term refers to the rate of response on response alternative A in relation to the rate of response on A + B

Likewise the relative rate of reinforcement on A = the rate of reinforcement on A/ rate of reinforcement on A + rate of reinforcement on B

Herrnstein states that organisms will come to approximately match their rate of responding on various alternatives to the relative rates of reinforcement for each alternative.

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The Generality of Matching• Matching has been seen with many

different species, rats, pigeons, cows, laboratory animals

• In humans, matching has been seen across many different situations

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Departures from Matching

• In the complex world of people and other animals, matching does not always occur– This is because in complex environments,

contingencies of positive and negative reinforcement may interact, reinforcers differ in value, and histories of reinforcement are not controlled

• Discrimination of alternative sources of reinforcement may be weak or absent

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Matching Time on an Alternative

• Behavioral choice can also be measured as time spent on an alternative– Time spent is a useful measure of behavior

when the response is continuous, as in talking to another person

• The matching law can also be expressed in terms of the relative time spent on an alternative– Ta/(Ta + Tb) = Ra/(Ra + Rb)

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Sources of Error in Matching Experiments

• Many unknown variables also affect choice in a concurrent-operant setting– These factors arise from the biology and environmental

history of the organism

– Sources of “error” may include different amounts of effort for the responses, qualitative differences in reinforcement such as food versus water, a history of punishment, a tendency to respond to the right alternative rather than to the left alternative, and sensory capacities

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Behavioral Economics, Choice, and Addiction

• The use of basic economic concepts and principles translated into behavioral terms and concepts.– Law of demand, price, substitutability (ect.) are used to

analyze, predict, and control behavior in choice situations

• Monkeys will choose cocaine over food in a concurrent schedule as determined by size of dose but if the price of cocaine is increased (more response effort required to obtain cocaine) fewer cocaine choices were made. If the same dose became too costly, monkeys chose to work for food instead.

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Self-Control• Given a choice between a small but

immediate payoff versus a delayed but larger payoff, choice of the former would be impulsive, the latter would constitute self-control.

• Ainslie-Rachlin Principle: reinforcement value of something decreases as the delay between making a choice and obtaining the reinforcer increases

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Preference Reversal• If a person examines a choice that they can make

later, then the value of a smaller, immediate reinforcer will be less than the value of the larger, delayed reward, indicating a preference reversal

• BUT as time to make the choice draws near, then the immediate small reward looks more appealing! So what do we do?

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How can self-control be made more likely?

• A Preference Reversal for the larger but delayed outcome instead of the smaller but sooner outcome can be more likely via a Commitment Response, a response that eliminates the impulsive choice as an option.

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Why is DRO Effective?

• Self-injurious behavior can be shown to be maintained by social reinforcement.

• Rates of self-injurious behavior matched rates of social attention for such acts.

• DRO increases the rates of extraneous sources of reinforcement availability.

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Chapter 10:Conditioned Reinforcement

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A scenario…• Imagine you are lost…• You finally stumble upon a landmark that is familiar to you• You become happy because you know how to get home from

this spot• This “spot” is both a CS that elicits happiness as well as an SD

for the behavior of “getting home.”• There is also a THIRD function of this stimulus• It has also served as a reinforcer for the “stumbling around”

behavior that led you to it• In fact, if we consider any series of linked behaviors (like

following directions or recipes, etc.), the consequence of completing each step is both a reinforcer for completing that step as well as an SD for completing the NEXT step

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Conditioned Reinforcement

• Conditioned reinforcement is when behavior is strengthened by consequence events that have an effect because of a learning history.

• The critical aspect of this history involves a pairing between an arbitrary event and an already established reinforcer.

• Once the arbitrary event increases the frequency of an operant behavior, it is called a conditioned reinforcer.

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Chain Schedules and Conditioned Reinforcement

• One way to investigate conditioned reinforcement is to construct sequences of behavior.

• A chain schedule of reinforcement involves two or more simple schedules (CRF, FI, VI, FR, etc.) each of which is presented sequentially and is signaled by an arbitrary stimulus (each has its own SD).

• Only the final or terminal link in this chain results in primary reinforcement.

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Multiple Stimulus Functions• An unsignalled chain (or tandem schedule) is a

sequence of two schedules (such as an FR150 -> FI 120 seconds) in which distinct SDs do not signal the different components

• In equivalent tandem vs. chain schedules, performances will be BETTER on the chain than the tandem

• This shows that distinct signals serve as both SDs and conditioned reinforcers.

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Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Chains

• Operant chains are classified as homogeneous when the topography or form of response is similar in each component, i.e., a similar response requirement is in effect in all components.

• A heterogeneous chain requires different responses in each link.

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Teaching a backwards Chain

• For complex tasks with many steps, often better to teach the final step FIRST and reinforce its completion

• After practicing this final unit many times and reinforcing its completion many times, ACESS to this unit of SD -> R -> SR will now serve as am effective conditioned reinforcer for the second to last unit on the chain of behavior

• More…

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Teaching a backwards Chain

• After practicing the second to last and final unit many times, ACESS to the SECOND TO LAST unit of SD -> R -> SR will now serve as am effective conditioned reinforcer for the THIRD to last unit on the chain of behavior

• And so on!• Note that we are not doing the behavior in reverse!

We are simply completing the final step first in our teaching procedure

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Determinants of Conditioned Reinforcement Strength

• Frequency of Primary Reinforcement paired with the conditioned reinforcer

• Variability of Primary Reinforcement paired with the conditioned reinforcer

• Establishing Operations

• Delay to Primary Reinforcement

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Delay Reduction and Conditioned Reinforcement

• Delay-reduction hypothesis• Stimuli closer in time to positive

reinforcement, or further in time from an aversive event, are more effective conditioned reinforcers.

• Stimuli that signal no reduction in time to reinforcement (SΔ) or no period of safety from an aversive event (Save) do not function as conditioned reinforcement.

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Concurrent-Chain Schedules of Reinforcement

• Previously we talked about choice where the organism is free to switch back and forth between different response alternatives (called CONCURRENT SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT)

• But often in the real world, once you choose one response alternative, you lock out the opportunity to do some other behavior for a period of time

• that is, choosing one response COMMITS you to that particular response for at least some period of time

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Concurrent-Chain Schedules of Reinforcement

• How would we study such an idea in the lab?• we could ask: which does a person prefer, working

on an FR10 or a VI60s each for some set period of time?

• this is a CONCURRENT CHAIN SCHEDULE• It involves two different components (an initial

LINK, or menu, and a terminal LINK)

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Concurrent-Chain Schedules of Reinforcement

• subject is given a "menu" in which it must press a particular key to TURN ON a particular schedule of reinforcement.

• There is no reinforcer given for making the initial link choice itself and the subject is given immediate access to whatever reinforcement schedule he chose

• Subject must stay on that schedule for some specified time.• Then he can make a choice again. • What is our measure of choice in a concurrent chain

schedule?• the proportion of times subject chooses one schedule over

another

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Concurrent-Chain Schedules of Reinforcement

• IF we put in a delay to access to the terminal links, however, then a subject is LESS likely to choose that initial link because there is now an increased delay to reinforcement

• For example, in a two-key concurrent-chain procedure with equivalent initial links but different lengths of delay to get to terminal links.

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Generalized Conditioned Reinforcement

• any event or stimulus paired with or, exchangeable for, many sources of primary reinforcement.

• Generalized reinforcement does not depend on deprivation or satiation for any specific reinforcer.

• Generalized social reinforcement for human behavior= approval, attention, affection, praise

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Tokens, Money and Generalized Reinforcement

• Other conditioned reinforcers are economic since they are exchangeable for goods and services. Probably the most important such reinforcement is money.

• A token economy is a set of contingencies based on token reinforcement; the contingencies specify when and under what conditions, particular forms of behavior are reinforced with tokens. Tokens are exchangeable for a variety of backup reinforcers.

Chapter 11Correspondence Relations:

Imitation and Rule-Governed Behavior

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Correspondence Relations

• People often do what others do. A child who observes an older sibling raid the cookie jar may engage in similar behavior.

• This is a correspondence between the modeled behavior and the replicated behavior.

• Technically, behavior of one person sets the occasion for (is an SD for) an equivalent response by the other.

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Correspondence Relations Continued

• There are other correspondence relations established by our culture. We often receive reinforcement if there is a correspondence between “saying” and “doing”.

• A large part of socialization involves reinforcement for “correspondence between what is said and what is done.”

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Correspondence Relations Continued

• Other people reinforce our behavior if there is consistency (“correspondence”) between spoken words and later performance.

• A minister who preaches moral conduct and lives a moral life is valued; when moral words and moral deeds do not match, people become upset and act to correct the inconsistency. (They deliver punishment!)

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Imitation

• Learning by observation involves doing what others do

• The behavior of an observer or learner is regulated by the actions of a model.

• imitation requires that the learner emit a response that could only occur by observing a model emit a similar response.

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Spontaneous Imitation

• Innate or spontaneous imitation is based on evolution and natural selection rather than learning experiences

• Implies imitation of others may be an important adaptive behavior.

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Immediate vs. Delayed Imitation

• Imitation may occur only when the model is present or it may be delayed for some time after the model has been removed.

• delayed imitation is more complex since it involves remembering the modeled stimulus (SD), rather than direct stimulus control.

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Operant and Generalized Imitation

• It is possible to teach “imitation” as an operant behavior

• discriminative stimulus is behavior of the model (SD

model), • operant is a response that matches the modeled

stimulus (Rmatch), and reinforcement is verbal praise (Sr

social). • “Matching the model” is reinforced, while

“non-correspondent responses” are extinguished.

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Operant and Generalized Imitation

• If imitation is reinforced and nonimitation is extinguished, imitation of the model will increase.

• On the other hand, nonimitation will occur if imitation is extinguished and nonimitation is reinforced.

• Learner learns to “do as the model does” regardless of what the form of the model is!

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Operant and Generalized Imitation

• Donald Baer and his associates provided a behavior analysis of imitation called generalized imitation

• involves several modeled stimuli (SDs) and multiple operants (Rmatch).

• In each case, what the model does sets the occasion for reinforcement of a similar response by the child; all other responses are extinguished.

• This training results in a stimulus class of models and an imitative response class. The child now imitates whichever response that the model performs.

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Generalized Imitation

• The next step is to test for generalization of the stimulus and response class.

• Baer and Sherman (1964) showed that a new-modeled stimulus would set the occasion for a novel imitative response, without any further reinforcement.

• Generalized imitation accounts for the appearance of novel imitative acts in children- even when these specific responses were never reinforced.

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Rules, Observational Learning, and Self-Efficacy

• For Skinner, “following the rules” is behavior under the control of verbal stimuli SDs.

• That is, statements of rules, advice, maxims, or laws are discriminative stimuli that set the occasion for behavior.

• Rules, as verbal descriptions, may affect observational learning.

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Rule-Governed Behavior• A large part of human behavior is regulated by verbal

stimuli.• The common property of these kinds of stimuli is that

they describe the operating contingencies of reinforcement.

• Formally, rules, instructions, advice, and laws are contingency-specifying stimuli, (they describe the SD:R→ Sr relations of everyday life.)

• The term rule-governed behavior is used when the listener’s (reader’s) performance is regulated by contingency-specifying stimuli.

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Rule-Governed and Contingency-Shaped Behavior

• People are said to solve problems either by discovery or by instruction.

• From a behavioral perspective the difference is between the direct effects of contingencies (discovery) and the indirect effects of rules (instruction).

• When performance is attributed to direct exposure to reinforcement contingencies, behavior is said to be contingency-shaped.

• As previously noted, performance set up by constructing and following instructions (and other verbal stimuli) is termed rule-governed behavior.

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Rule-Governed and Contingency-Shaped Behavior

• The importance of reinforcement contingencies in establishing and maintaining rule-following is clearly seen with ineffective rules and instructions.

• When rules describe delayed and improbable events, it is necessary to find other reasons to follow them.

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Instructions and Contingencies

• In his discussion of rule-governed and contingency-shaped behavior, Skinner (1969) speculated that instructions may affect performance differently than the actual contingencies of reinforcement.

• One way to test this idea is to expose humans to reinforcement procedures that are accurately or inaccurately described by the experimenter’s instructions.

• If behavior varies with the instructions while the actual contingencies remain the same, this would be evidence for Skinner’s assertion.

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Instructions and Contingencies

• Instructions are complex discriminative stimuli.

• Instructional control is a form of rule-governed behavior.

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Chapter 12Verbal Behavior

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Language and Verbal Behavior

• In contrast with the term language, verbal behavior deals with the performance of a speaker and the environmental conditions that establish and maintain such performance

• Verbal behavior refers to the vocal, written and gestural performance of a speaker, writer or communicator. This behavior operates on the listener, reader or observer, who then arranges reinforcement of the verbal performance.

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Speaking, Listening and the Verbal Community

• Verbal behavior refers to the behavior of the speaker, writer or gesturer.

• The verbal community: the practices and customary ways a given culture reinforces the behavior of a speaker

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Operant Functions of Verbal Behavior: Mands

• A mand is a response class of verbal operants whose form (what is said or written) is regulated by specific establishing operations (deprivation, satiation, etc.)

• In lay terms, mands involve asking for something you need to happen

• It is commonly said that a mand specifies its own reinforcer as in “Give me a cookie…” but such commands are only a small part of mands.

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Operant Functions of Verbal Behavior: Tacts

• A tact is a response class of verbal operants whose form (what is said or written) is regulated by specific nonverbal discriminative stimuli

• “tact” is derived from “contact” in that tacts are verbal operants that make contact with the environment.

• In lay terms, tacts involve pointing something out, commenting about something, labeling or identifying something

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Does the form of the Verbal Behavior identify the type? NOPE

• Behavior: “Honey, you sure look sexy tonight!” • Is this a tact or a mand? • Identifying the type of verbal behavior depends on

the FUNCTION of the behavior!• What function does this statement have?

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Training Verbal Operants: Mands

• To teach manding, the most direct procedure is to manipulate an establishing operation (“remove the toy”), and then reinforce the verbal response (“can I have the toy?”) with the specified consequence (guess what it is!).

• Sometimes called “teaching requesting”

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Training Verbal Operants: Tacts• To teach tacting, a speaker must emit a verbal operant

whose form (what is said) is a function of a nonverbal discriminative stimulus; reinforcement is non-specific to that stimulus.

• A child comes home from preschool and when seeing her mother the child says, “Let me tell you what I learned today…” and the child names several parts of the body and points to where they are. These would be tacts that would likely be reinforced by praise and hugs from the proud parent. (Mother may need to PROMPT that tacting by the child “What did you do in school today?”)

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Additional Verbal Relations: Intraverbals

• An intraverbal is a verbal operant (what the listener says) controlled by a verbal discriminative stimulus (what the speaker says) but there is no one-to-one relation between the intraverbal and its SD.

• If you overhear me saying. “I’ll be damned!” to which you covertly reply “ I sure hope so…” your response is an intraverbal

• Teaching a child ABCs: You say “ABCDEFG” and the child says “HIJK-ellamennopee”

• “Free association” therapy demonstrates this when the therapist says “Mother” and you say “dominatrix” (haha!)

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Additional Verbal Relations: Echoics

• An echoic is a verbal operant in response to a verbal SD but with a point-to-point correspondence between the SD and operant. If you swear after hitting your thumb with a hammer (“Damn!”) and your four year-old-son subsequently repeats your expletive, his response is an echoic.

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Additional Verbal Relations: Textuals

• A textual is a verbal operant in which the verbal SD (written or spoken words made by another) and the response the listener makes correspond to each other but not with a formal PHYSICAL similarity.

• In lay terms, you are READING aloud (or to yourself) or TAKING NOTES

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Symbolic Behavior and Stimulus Equivalence

• Stimulus equivalence occurs when presentation of one class of stimuli occasion responses made to other stimulus classes.

• Example: Most Americans will have a specific response to the written or spoken word or image of “Osama Bin Laden.”

• The word in any recognizable form or media, or the image of the person whether in cartoon caricature, photograph or video footage, will occasion the same response.

• Stimulus equivalence is said to exist when reflexivity, symmetry and transitivity can be shown to be in effect between distinct stimuli.

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Basic Equivalence Relations

• Reflexivity (also referred to as identity matching or matching to sample); a picture of Bin Laden is matched up with an identical picture of Bin Laden. (A=A)

• Symmetry: stimulus A is interchangeable with stimulus B, or A=B and B=A; a picture of Bin Laden is matched up with the phrase “head of Al Queida” and vice versa.

• Transitivity consists of showing that stimulus A = B and stimulus B=C and if the learner responds to A as interchangeable or equivalent to C then transitivity is in effect between A, B and C. If stimulus A (a picture of Bin Laden) is equivalent to stimulus B, “head of Al Queida” and B is equivalent to written words OSAMA BIN LADEN as stimulus C; if the picture of Bin Laden (stimulus A) is matched up with the written words OSAMA BIN LADEN (stimulus C) then transitivity is shown.