STIMULI, REINFORCERS, AND BEHAVIOR: AN INTEGRATION
- 1 May 1999
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
- Vol. 71 (3), 439-482
- https://doi.org/10.1901/jeab.1999.71-439
Abstract
We propose that a fundamental unit of behavior is the concurrent discriminated operant, and we discuss in detail a quantitative model of the concurrent three-term contingency that is based on the notion that an animal's behavior is controlled to differing extents by both stimulus—behavior and behavior—reinforcer relations. We show how this model can describe performance in a variety of experimental procedures: conditional discrimination and matching to sample, both with and without reinforcement for responses that are traditionally identified as errors; conditional discrimination with more than two stimuli and choice alternatives; delayed matching to sample and delayed reinforcement in matching to sample; second-order and complex conditional discrimination; and multiple and concurrent schedules. Although the model is incomplete in its coverage, and may be incorrect, we believe that this conceptual approach will bear fruit in the development of behavior theory.Keywords
This publication has 86 references indexed in Scilit:
- Corrections for extreme proportions and their biasing effects on estimated values ofd′Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 1995
- On the dynamics of behavior allocation between simultaneously and successively available reinforcer sourcesBehavioural Processes, 1993
- Stimulus discriminability, contingency discriminability, and schedule performanceLearning & Behavior, 1985
- The role of stimulus disparity in concurrently available reinforcement schedulesLearning & Behavior, 1980
- Enhancement of pigeons’ conditional discrimination performance by expectancies of reinforcement and nonreinforcementLearning & Behavior, 1980
- Psychometric and psychophysical theory within a framework of response bias.Psychological Review, 1974
- Comparison of three methods for obtaining psychophysical thresholds from the pigeon.Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 1966
- Prediction of preference, transposition, and transposition-reversal from the generalization gradient.Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1962
- Indices of Signal Detectability Obtained with Various Psychophysical ProceduresThe Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1959
- Stimulus and response generalization: Deduction of the generalization gradient from a trace model.Psychological Review, 1958