Reinforcement and Punishment Effects in Concurrent Schedules: A Test of Two Models

Six pigeons were trained on two-and three-alternative concurrent schedules in which the alternatives were signaled by different wavelengths of light on the main pecking key. The schedules were arranged according to a switching-key procedure in which pecks on a white side key produced a 3-s blackout and, intermittently, a change in the variable-interval schedule of food programmed on the main (center) key after the blackout. In Part 1, a two-alternative concurrent variable-interval schedule was arranged in which the alternatives were signaled by 560 nm and 630 nm. Parts 2 and 3 arranged threealternative concurrent variable-interval schedules with the alternatives signaled by 560 nm, 600 nm, and 630 nm (Part 2) and 560 nm, 623 nm, and 630 nm (Part 3). Within each part, the relative rate of food reinforcers available on the alternatives was varied across a wide range. In all parts of the experiment, the ratios of responses emitted between pairs of alternatives were more extreme than the ratios of reinforcers obtained on the pairs of alternatives, a result termed overmatching. In Parts 2 and 3, generalized matching sensitivities between pairs of alternatives were found to be higher when the reinforcer rate on the third alternative was low than when it was high-an apparent failure of the constant-ratio rule. The data were well described by an extension of the Davison and Jenkins (1985) model, which assumes differing discriminabilities between concurrent-schedule alternatives in combination with a punishing effect of blackout following changeovers.

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Modeling the Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Modeling the Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Effects of the Discriminability of Alternatives in Three‐alternative Concurrent‐schedule Performance

Davison

McCarthy

1994

“…Davison and Smith (1986), in a similar procedure in which terminal-link entries produced additional food reinforcers, also found that adding food reinforcers to initial-link responses decreased the sensitivity of initial-link responding to the reinforcer rates in the terminal-link periods. The increased preferences, relative to baseline, for the HIVI in the negative-transition conditions are also reminiscent of the effects of punishment on responding maintained by concurrent VI VI schedules of reinforcement (de Villiers, 1980;Farley, 1980). These studies showed that preference for the richer VI schedule was enhanced when punishment was applied equally to responding on both appetitive VI schedules.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…Instead, choice proportions increased for the shorter concurrent VI or in the direction opposite to that predicted (because the shorter concurrent VI always led to the longer terminal link). As noted above, both Farley (1980) and de Villiers (1980) found that preference for the shorter of two concurrent VI VI schedules increased when punishment was arranged equally for responding on both VIs. If the negative transitions served as punishers (arranged equally for responding on both VIs by a VI 60-s schedule of access to the terminal links), an enhancement might have occurred in the present study as well.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

Effects of Reinforcement Context on Choice

Jacob¹,

Fantino²

1988

Two experiments investigated the effects of successive reinforcement contexts on choice. In the first, concurrent variable-interval schedules of primary reinforcement operated during the initial links of concurrent chains. The rate of this reinforcement arranged by the concurrent schedules was decreased across conditions: When it was higher than the terminal-link rate, preference for the higher frequency initial-link schedule increased relative to baseline. (During baseline, a standard concurrent-schedule procedure was in effect.) When the initial-link reinforcement rate was lower than the terminal-link rate, preference converged toward indifference. In the second experiment, a chain schedule was available on a third key while a concurrent schedule was in effect on the side keys. When the terminal link of the chain schedule was produced, the side keys became inoperative. Availability of the chain schedule did not affect choice between the concurrent schedules. These results show that only when successive reinforcement contexts are produced by choice responding do those successive contexts affect choice in concurrent schedules.Key words: concurrent schedules, concurrent chains, successive reinforcement context, choice, key peck, pigeonsContextual variables have been shown to be important determiners of behavior (e.g., Fantino & Dunn, 1983;Gibbon, 1981;Heyman & Bouzas, 1980;Rescorla, 1982;Reynolds, 1961;Williams, 1981). For example, the effects of reinforcement context on response rate have been demonstrated in experimental situations involving one (Rachlin & Baum, 1972), two (Catania, 1963;Duncan & Silberberg, 1982;Lobb & Davison, 1977;Rachlin & Baum, 1969;Wilkie, 1973), or three response keys (Davison & Hunter, 1976;Davison & Temple, 1974;Nevin, Mandell, & Yarensky, 1981). In the above experiments, an alternative source of reinforcement-the reinforcement context-varied in reinforcer amount (Rachlin & Baum, 1969) or rate (e.g., Catania, 1963), or the alternative reinforcers were delayed (e.g., Rachlin & Baum, 1972), signaled (e.g., Nevin et al., 1981), or delivered freely as opposed to response contingently (e.g., Duncan & Silberberg, 1982). The The effect of contextual reinforcement upon choice per se has also been investigated (Davison, 1982;Davison & Hunter, 1976;Davison & Temple, 1974;Fantino & Dunn, 1983;Lobb & Davison, 1977;McLean & White,. 1983;Miller & Loveland, 1974;Pliskoff & Brown, 1976;Pliskoff, Shull, & Gollub, 1968;Prelec & Herrnstein, 1978). In these studies, contextual reinforcement consisted of a schedule of primary reinforcement, operating in the presence of, and uniquely correlated with, an exteroceptive stimulus. The contextual-reinforcement schedule constituted an additional source of primary reinforcement, above and beyond that which maintained the choice responding under study. The reinforcement context was provided in one of two ways. In one group of studies, it consisted of a third choice alternative, added to the original two-alternative choice. The added choice alternative was arrange...

Toward a contemporary quantitative model of punishment

Klapes

Riley

McDowell

2018

A direct-suppression, or subtractive, model of punishment has been supported as the qualitatively and quantitatively superior matching law-based punishment model (Critchfield, Paletz, MacAleese, & Newland, 2003; de Villiers, 1980; Farley, 1980). However, this conclusion was made without testing the model against its predecessors, including the original (Herrnstein, 1961) and generalized (Baum, 1974) matching laws, which have different numbers of parameters. To rectify this issue, we reanalyzed a set of data collected by Critchfield et al. (2003) using information theoretic model selection criteria. We found that the most advanced version of the direct-suppression model (Critchfield et al., 2003) does not convincingly outperform the generalized matching law, an account that does not include punishment rates in its prediction of behavior allocation. We hypothesize that this failure to outperform the generalized matching law is due to significant theoretical shortcomings in model development. To address these shortcomings, we present a list of requirements that all punishment models should satisfy. The requirements include formal statements of flexibility, efficiency, and adherence to theory. We compare all past punishment models to the items on this list through algebraic arguments and model selection criteria. None of the models presented in the literature thus far meets all of the requirements.