1999/05/01 by Michael Davison, John A. Nevin · 13 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Autism Spectrum Disorder Research #Behavioral and Psychological Studies #Botanical Research and Chemistry
paper · pdf · doi:10.1901/jeab.1999.71-439
crossref issued 1999/05/01 · crossref published 1999/05/01 · crossref published-print 1999/05/01 · openalex publication_date 1999/05/01 · crossref created 2006/03/02 · crossref published-online 2013/02/26 · crossref deposited 2023/10/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
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.