2011/09/01 by Nathalie Boutros, Douglas Elliffe, Michael Davison · 14 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Mathematics · Psychology · Veterinary · #Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies #Artificial intelligence #Behavioral and Psychological Studies #Cognitive psychology #Computer science #Developmental psychology #Discriminative model #Insect and Pesticide Research #Mathematics #Preference #Psychology #Reinforcement #Schedule #Social psychology #Statistics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1901/jeab.2011.96-227
published in Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 96(2), 227-241 (Wiley)
crossref issued 2011/09/01 · crossref published 2011/09/01 · crossref published-print 2011/09/01 · openalex publication_date 2011/09/01 · crossref created 2012/04/02 · crossref published-online 2013/02/26 · crossref deposited 2023/10/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Reinforcers may increase operant responding via a response-strengthening mechanism whereby the probability of the preceding response increases, or via some discriminative process whereby the response more likely to provide subsequent reinforcement becomes, itself, more likely. We tested these two accounts. Six pigeons responded for food reinforcers in a two-alternative switching-key concurrent schedule. Within a session, equal numbers of reinforcers were arranged for responses to each alternative. Those reinforcers strictly alternated between the two alternatives in half the conditions, and were randomly allocated to the alternatives in half the conditions. We also varied, across conditions, the alternative that became available immediately after a reinforcer. Preference after a single reinforcer always favored the immediately available alternative, regardless of the local probability of a reinforcer on that alternative (0 or 1 in the strictly alternating conditions, .5 in the random conditions). Choice then reflected the local reinforcer probabilities, suggesting some discriminative properties of reinforcement. At a more extended level, successive same-alternative reinforcers from an alternative systematically shifted preference towards that alternative, regardless of which alternative was available immediately after a reinforcer. There was no similar shift when successive reinforcers came from alternating sources. These more temporally extended results may suggest a strengthening function of reinforcement, or an enhanced ability to respond appropriately to "win-stay" contingencies over "win-shift" contingencies.