An investigation of resurgence of reinforced behavioral variability in humans

Abstract

The present study examined resurgence of reinforced variability in college students, who completed a 3‐phase computer‐based variability task. In the first phase, baseline, points were delivered for drawing rectangles that sufficiently differed from previous rectangles in terms of a target dimension (size or location, counterbalanced) but were sufficiently similar in terms of the alternative dimension. In the second phase, alternative, points were only delivered for rectangles that were sufficiently different in terms of the alternative dimension, but repetitive in terms of the target dimension. In the third phase, extinction, no points were delivered. In baseline, participants made rectangles that were highly varied in terms of the target dimension and less varied in terms of the alternative dimension, and vice versa in the alternative phase. During extinction, levels of variability increased for the target dimension, providing evidence for resurgence of reinforced variability of a specific dimension of behavior. However, levels of variability also remained high for the alternative dimension, indicating that extinction‐induced response variability may also have impacted the results. Although future research is needed to explore other explanations, the results of this study replicate prior research with pigeons and provide some support for the notion of variability as an operant.

Examining effects of training duration on humans' resurgence and variability using a novel touchscreen procedure

“…It is possible that swipes in this range required greater response effort compared to swipes toward the top‐right and center‐left portions of the screen. However, an alternate explanation for the findings of the present study and A. Galizio et al (2020) is that participants' preexperimental reinforcement history with electronic devices affected the distribution of responses such that some responses (responses near the center of the screen, swipes to the left and right of the participant) might have been more likely to occur than others (responses near the edges of the screen or swipes toward the participant). Further examination of the role of response generalization in resurgence under related procedures might assess biases in the absence of reinforcement and arrange those contingencies such that target or alternative responses are not consistent with those biases.…”

“…Response effort has been shown to influence response allocation in choice tasks in humans (e.g., Shabani et al, 2009) and nonhumans (Salamone et al, 2016, 2018). A reanalysis of data from A. Galizio et al (2020) also suggests that response effort could have influenced participants' responding during resurgence testing in their study. For half of participants in A. Galizio et al, drawing rectangles in varied locations (i.e., across 16 sectors on a computer screen) produced reinforcers in Phase 1.…”

“…We calculated U‐values (e.g., Page & Neuringer, 1985) by phase for each group as a measure of variability. U‐value is commonly used to assess behavioral variability (e.g., A. Galizio et al, 2020) and is calculated according to the equation: where RF is the relative frequency of swipe directions i , and n is the number of possible responses. We identified eight possible swipe directions, each spanning 45 degrees.…”

“…When a previously reinforced response is placed on extinction, other forms of responding can emerge in addition to the resurgence of target responding, often termed extinction‐induced variability (e.g., Cox et al, 2019; see Neuringer & Jensen, 2013; see also Lattal and Oliver, 2020, for a discussion on the use of this term). Assessing the variability accompanying extinction contingencies along with resurgence provides potential insights into behavioral processes contributing to behavioral treatments (see Ho et al, 2018; Liggett et al, 2018; A. Galizio et al, 2020, for discussions). Researchers have developed methods to address the potential contribution of extinction‐induced response variation when evaluating resurgence.…”

“…A. Galizio et al (2020) arranged target and alternative responses along a continuum to examine resurgence of response variability in university students. Participants created rectangles on a computer screen that could vary along different dimensions (size, location).…”