Effects of Response Spacing on Acquisition and Retention of Conditional Discriminations

Abstract

Pigeons were exposed to a repeated acquisition procedure in which no delays were imposed and rate of responding was relatively high. They also were exposed to conditions in which delays were arranged between trials within chains or between completed chains, and rates of responding were lower. Number of trials, rate of reinforcement, difficulty of the discrimination, and motivating operations were held constant. Terminal accuracy was highest under the no-delay condition, in which rate of responding was highest. Effects of trial spacing on retention were mixed and depended on whether delays were imposed between trials within chains or between completed chains. These findings provide basic-research support for the rapid presentation of trials in direct instruction and for rate building in precision teaching.

A Group Contingency Plus Self-Management Intervention Targeting At-Risk Secondary Students’ Class-Work and Active Engagement

“…Second, students were able to provide more frequent responses with the use of self-monitoring within the self-management strategies as the timers were set a total of three times (“stop 1”, “stop 2”, “end”) to prompt students to stop reading and write answers linked to the story, instead of the general teacher prompt they had prior to the intervention. Dividing tasks into smaller chunks for quick and frequent responding has been documented as an effective strategy to increase response proficiency and skill acquisition (e.g., Porritt, Van Wagner, & Poling, 2009; Rhymer, Skinner, Henington, D’Reaux, & Sims, 1998). Breaking down the instruction into smaller segments has also been documented in the reading comprehension literature in order to increase students’ use of study strategies, comprehension of text, and test scores in content areas (e.g., Belfiore, Skinner, & Ferkis, 1995; Harvey & Goudvis, 2000; Williams, 2002; Worsdell et al, 2005).…”

Analysis of the interaction between experimental and applied behavior analysis

“…The results show the distribution of publications by topic to which dual authors have contributed to either journal over the years. The topics on which dual authors published most frequently across both journals include stimulus control and stimulus equivalence (e.g., Fields, Doran, & Marroquin, ; Porritt, Van Wagner, & Poling, ), behavioral pharmacology and addictive behavior (e.g., Smith & Bickel, ), the matching law (e.g., Alferink et al, ), schedules of reinforcement (e.g., Lee, McComas, & Jawor, ), verbal behavior (e.g., Horne, Hughes, & Lowe, ), delayed reinforcement (e.g., Reilly & Lattal, ), behavioral momentum (e.g., Mace & Belfiore, ), and field‐related issues (e.g., Morris & Smith, ). Topics that have been shown to be of interest to dual authors across both journals but had generated a smaller number of studies include matching to sample (e.g., Fields et al, ), reinforcer properties (e.g., Neef, Mace, & Shade, ), generalization (e.g., Lima & Abreu‐Rodrigues, ), behavioral history (e.g., Pipkin & Vollmer, ), and extinction (e.g., Mace et al, ).…”

ANIMAL RESEARCH IN THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

“…Finally, studies with animals that clarify behavioral processes that are clearly relevant to human response patterns of applied significance, like say-do correspondence (Lattal & Doepke, 2001) and fluent responding (Porritt et al, 2009), are of direct relevance to applied behavior analysis. Many prominent behavior analysts have pointed out the value of such research, noted that it is surprisingly rare, and encouraged their colleagues to do it (e.g., Lattal & Doepke, 2001;Mace & Critchfield, 2010).…”

“…A pigeon study by Porritt, Van Wagner, and Poling (2009) took a similar general tack. The applied phenomenon that interested them was fluency, which is evident in responding that is simultaneously fast and accurate.…”