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Behavioral Momentum and the Partial Reinforcement Effect
Abstract
Free-operant behavior is more resistant to change when the rate of reinforcement is high than when it is low. The usual partial reinforcement extinction effect, demonstrating greater resistance to extinction after intermittent than after continuous reinforcement, seems to contradict this generalization. However, most free-operant extinction data are reported as response totals, which confound the initial levels of responding and the rate at which responding decreases over the course of extinction. A reanalysis shows that after extended training, the slope of the extinction curve is shallower after continuous reinforcement than after intermittent reinforcement, suggesting greater rather than less resistance to change. These results, which hold for both independent-groups and within-subject comparisons, support the general finding that resistance to change of free-operant behavior is a positive function of the rate of reinforcement. This generalization does not, however, hold for discrete-trial performance. I discuss some consequences of these analyses for applications of behavioral research results.
... Just as a physical body continues in motion until acted upon by an outside force, ongoing behavior maintained by constant reinforcement continues at a steady rate until acted upon by an external variable, and this has been referred to as behavioral momentum (e.g., Nevin et al., 1983). Baseline response rate is considered equivalent to initial velocity, and resistance to change is considered equivalent to mass (see Nevin, 1988Nevin, , 2012; thus, behavioral momentum is the product of response rate (velocity) and resistance to change (mass). Behavioral momentum has its roots in the study of learning, and studies of behavioral momentum use methodologies, analyses, and language of learning theory. ...
... Furthermore, forward displacement is decreased if targets exhibit an irregularly changing velocity (Getzmann & Lewald, 2009), and for a constant final velocity, forward displacement is decreased if a target is consistently decelerating and increased if a target is consistently accelerating (Actis-Grosso, Bastianelli, & Stucchi, 2008;Finke, Freyd, & Shyi, 1986). In behavioral momentum literature, velocity is considered to be analogous to response rate (Nevin, 1988;Nevin et al., 1983). Withdrawing reinforcement results in a decrease in response rate equivalent to a decrease in velocity and a concomitant decrease in behavioral momentum (i.e., an increase in extinction, Nevin & Shahan, 2011). ...
... Operational momentum occurs with relatively smaller (single digit) and larger (two digit) quantities (Knops et al., 2009;Lindemann & Tira, 2011). Resistance to a change in behavior is considered analogous to mass, and greater mass leads to larger behavioral momentum (Nevin, 1988). The importance or value of a behavior or outcome is considered analogous to mass, and increases in the importance or value of a behavior or outcome leads to increases in psychological momentum (Markman & Guenther, 2007). ...
Cognition and behavior exhibit biases consistent with future expectations, and some of these biases result in momentum-like effects and have been linked with the idea of momentum. These momentum-like effects include representational momentum, operational momentum, attentional momentum, behavioral momentum, and psychological momentum. Effects of numerous variables involving characteristics of the target, display, context, or observer on each momentum-like effect are considered, and similarities of different momentum-like effects are considered. It is suggested that representational momentum, operational momentum, and attentional momentum reflect similar or overlapping mechanisms based on a perceptual time-scale and extrapolation primarily across space, and that behavioral momentum and psychological momentum reflect similar or overlapping mechanisms based on a longer time-scale and extrapolation primarily across time. It is further suggested that all 5 forms of momentum-like effect could reflect a more general extrapolation mechanism that anticipates the future action, behavior, or outcome of a given target, person, or process. A list of properties characterizing momentum-like effects is proposed, and constraints and issues relevant to future models of momentum-like effects are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
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... Just as a physical body continues in motion until acted upon by an outside force, ongoing behavior maintained by constant conditions of reinforcement continues at a steady rate until acted upon by an external variable (Nevin et al., 1983). Baseline response rate under constant conditions is considered equivalent to initial velocity, and resistance of behavior to change is considered equivalent to mass (Nevin, 1988(Nevin, , 2012; therefore, behavioral momentum is the product of response rate (analogous to velocity) and resistance to change (analogous to mass). More specifically, response-reinforcer (operant) relationships correspond to velocity, and stimulus-reinforcer (Pavlovian) relationships correspond to mass (Nevin, 1992). ...
... Partial reinforcement extinction effect. A key claim of behavioral momentum theory is that resistance to a change in behavior is stronger if reinforcement rate is higher than if reinforcement rate is lower (e.g., Nevin, 1988;Nevin and Grace, 2000;Nevin and Shahan, 2011). However, this claim initially appears inconsistent with the standard view noted earlier that responding extinguishes more quickly after learning under a continuous reinforcement schedule (more total reinforcement) than after learning under a partial reinforcement schedule (less total reinforcement). ...
... However, this claim initially appears inconsistent with the standard view noted earlier that responding extinguishes more quickly after learning under a continuous reinforcement schedule (more total reinforcement) than after learning under a partial reinforcement schedule (less total reinforcement). This latter finding has been referred to as the partial reinforcement extinction effect, and Nevin (1988and Nevin ( , 2012 discussed the relationship between the partial reinforcement extinction effect and behavioral momentum in detail. Nevin (1988) presented pigeons with two schedules. ...
The behavior of an organism often exhibits biases consistent with an anticipation of future behavior. One such type of bias results in momentum-like effects in which past behavior is extrapolated or continued into the future, and examples include behavioral momentum and psychological momentum. Similarities and differences between behavioral momentum and psychological momentum are considered. It is suggested that (a) behavioral momentum and psychological momentum are closely related and reflect similar or overlapping mechanisms despite differences in experimental methodologies and nomenclatures, (b) behavioral momentum and psychological momentum reflect dynamic representation, and (c) dynamic representation can operate across several different time-scales, and (d) behavioral momentum and psychological momentum might be related (via processes involved in dynamic representation) to other types of momentum-like effect.
... Behavioral severity can be defined using objective dimensions of behavior such as frequency/ rate, duration, intensity, and permanent products (Johnston & Pennypacker, 1993). Behavioral severity that is operationalized by high frequencies, durations, and / or intensities is more resistant to intervention than behaviors having lower levels of these behavioral dimensions (Gresham, 1991;Nevin, 1988). These behaviors are not only more resistant to interventions but also tend to produce high rates of positive reinforcement (e.g., social attention or access to tangibles) and / or negative reinforcement (e.g., escape or avoidance of task demands) for the student. ...
... Generalization and maintenance of behavior change is directly related to RTI. If a behavior pattern is severe (i.e., in terms of frequency, intensity, and / or duration), chronic (i.e., it has been resistant to intervention), it will tend to show less generalization across different, non-intervention conditions and will show less maintenance over time when intervention procedures are withdrawn (Horner & Billingsley, 1988;Nevin, 1988). Students who demonstrate severe behavior patterns over an extended period of time are quick to discriminate intervention from non-intervention conditions, particularly when intervention conditions are vastly different from non-intervention conditions. ...
Children and youth exhibiting serious emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal problems create substantial challenges for schools, teachers, their parents, and other students. Students having these characteristics are often underserved or unserved by educational and mental health systems in the United States. Recent prevalence rates for children served as emotionally disturbed (ED) under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act is less than 1 percent although over 20 percent of the school population could qualify for a psychiatric diagnosis. A major reason for the underservice of children as ED lies in the federal definition of emotional disturbance which is nebulous, often illogical, and self-contradictory. An alternative approach to ED identification based on a student's response to an evidence-based intervention is proposed in this article. Response to intervention is defined and described along with methods and procedures for quantifying whether or not a student shows an adequate or inadequate response to an evidence-based intervention implemented with integrity.
... Musical mass. In behavioral momentum (e.g., Nevin, 1988Nevin, , 2012, the behavioral analogue of mass is the resistance of the behavior to change. The greater the resistance to change, the greater the behavioral mass. ...
... Musical velocity. In behavioral momentum (e.g., Nevin, 1988Nevin, , 2012, the behavioral analogue of velocity is response rate. In psychological momentum (e.g., Markman & Guenther, 2007), the psychological analogue of velocity is not as clearly defined, but seems to reflect either response rate or reinforcement rate (which, of course, are often correlated). ...
A melodic line involves a note of a given pitch and duration, followed by another note of a given pitch and duration, and so on, but we often perceive such musical succession in time as movement in space (e.g., melodic contours ascend or descend, etc.), and concepts related to motion have been used to describe and understand musical experience. Johnson and Larson (2003) suggested musical motion is analogous to motion of physical objects, and Larson (2012) discussed musical forces analogous to the forces that operate on physical objects. In this review, one such musical force, musical inertia, is compared with momentum-like effects that occur in other (nonmusical) domains. Although musical inertia was previously suggested to be analogous to representational momentum, these two effects operate on different time-scales, and it is proposed that musical representation might exhibit behavioral momentum or psychological momentum or might exhibit a unique form of musical momentum. Such a musical momentum would reflect dynamic mental representation and properties of the functional architecture of music representation; be related to auditory stream segregation, perceptual grouping, and auditory kappa and tau effects; and reflect naive beliefs regarding force. Possible musical analogues of the components of momentum (mass, velocity) are considered.
... ANIMAL OLFACTORY DETECTION OF HUMAN DISEASES 6 (positive indications of disease-negative samples). Intermittent reinforcement generates patterns of behavior that persist even when reinforcement is no longer forthcoming (Angle et al., 2015;Nevin, 1988). Persistent indication of disease-negative samples negatively impacts specificity (proportion of disease-negative samples that are accurately classified as such), is not reinforced, the animal will learn to continue evaluating the remaining samples, as it would be required to do in an operational scenario. ...
... If identification responses are reinforced every time a positive sample is correctly identified, the response will deteriorate quickly under testing and operational conditions in which the status of some proportion of samples is unknown and, therefore, some correct identifications cannot be reinforced. Behavior that is reinforced intermittently is more persistent when it is no longer reinforced (i.e., it is more resistant to extinction) than behavior that is reinforced each time it occurs (Nevin, 1988;. But, in order to avoid degrading an animal's performance, intermittent reinforcement must be introduced gradually. ...
Animal olfactory detection of human diseases has attracted an increasing amount of interest from researchers in recent years. Because of the inconsistent findings reported in this body of research and the complexity of scent detection research, it is difficult to ascertain the potential value of animal detectors in operational diagnostic algorithms. We have outlined key factors associated with successful training and evaluation of animals for operational disease detection and, using these key factors as points for comparison, conducted a systematic review of the research in this area. Studies that were published in peer-reviewed outlets and that described original research evaluating animals for detection of human diseases were included in the review. The majority of relevant studies have assessed dogs as detectors of various forms of cancer. Other researchers have targeted bacteriuria, Clostridium difficile, hypoglycemia, and tuberculosis. Nematodes and pouched rats were the only exceptions to canine detectors. Of the 28 studies meeting inclusion criteria, only 9 employed operationally feasible procedures. The most common threat to operational viability was the use of a fixed number of positive samples in each sample run. Most reports included insufficient information for replication or adequate evaluation of the validity of the findings. Therefore, we have made recommendations regarding the type of information that should be included when describing research in this area. The results of this systematic review suggest that animal detectors hold promise for certain diagnostic applications but that additional research evaluating operationally viable systems for olfactory detection of human diseases is necessary.
... Discrimination itself is an important component in extinction, in which the change in contingency must be detected and discriminated from the contingency previously in effect (for a review see Nevin and Grace, 2000). The partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) is an example of this (Nevin, 1988;Nevin and Grace, 2000). Although richer schedules of reinforcement are generally associated with greater resistance to extinction, partial reinforcement schedules lead to greater resistance to extinction compared to continuous schedules (Nevin, 1988;Nevin and Grace, 2000d). ...
... The partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) is an example of this (Nevin, 1988;Nevin and Grace, 2000). Although richer schedules of reinforcement are generally associated with greater resistance to extinction, partial reinforcement schedules lead to greater resistance to extinction compared to continuous schedules (Nevin, 1988;Nevin and Grace, 2000d). This is thought, in part, to be related to discrimination between continuous schedules and extinction being better than between intermittent and extinction schedules. ...
Domestic dogs are trained for a wide variety of jobs; however, half of dogs that enter working dog training organizations never become certified. The aim of this study was to identify whether a basic measure of behavioral persistence was associated with sixteen dogs’ performance on an odor discrimination learning task. Further, we evaluated whether dogs that adopted more of a win-stay or win-shift strategy during discrimination learning was associated with greater persistence. Lastly, we tested if measures of a standardized canine behavior questionnaire (the CBARQ) predicted discrimination learning. We found greater persistence during extinction was associated with poorer discrimination learning. Further, dogs that employed more of a win-stay strategy (compared to win-shift) during the discrimination learning phase showed greater persistence in the persistence task and poorer performance on the odor discrimination task. Lastly, the CBARQ measure of trainability showed a trend association with odor discrimination performance, but no other behavioral characteristics were related. Overall, high levels of behavioral persistence is detrimental to olfactory discrimination learning.
... Expressing data as a proportion of baseline allows one to control for differences in response rates related to the schedule components and is the principal method to evaluate behavioral persistence and relapse in basic research on BMT (Craig et al., 2014;Mace et al., 2010;Nevin, 1988;Nevin, Tota, Torquato, & Shull, 1990). proportion-of-baseline responding during the FCT and extinction-challenge phases for Marcus, Ace, Bernie, and Owen in Experiment 1. ...
Concepts from behavioral momentum theory, along with some empirical findings, suggest that the rate of baseline reinforcement may contribute to the relapse of severe destructive behavior. With seven children who engaged in destructive behavior, we tested this hypothesis in the context of functional communication training by comparing the effects of different baseline reinforcement rates on resurgence during a treatment challenge (i.e., extinction). We observed convincing resurgence of destructive behavior in four of seven participants, and we observed more resurgence in the condition associated with high-rate baseline reinforcement (i.e., variable-interval 2 s in Experiment 1 or fixed-ratio 1 in Experiment 2) compared to a low-rate baseline reinforcement condition. We discuss the implications of these results relative to schedules of reinforcement in the treatment of destructive behavior and strategies to mitigate resurgence in clinical settings.
... One result of only having fixed intervals was that participants did not internalize their improved behavior. Nevin has studied how often rewards need to be given to change behavior (14). When trying to promote the internalization of behavior, one of the key principles is that desired behavior should not be rewarded every time it occurs. ...
The most important objective of the Department of Transport (DOT) in the Netherlands is to make Dutch freeways safer and less congested. To achieve these objectives, standard practice has been to influence the behavior of road users through punitive measures. To investigate the feasibility of doing the opposite, namely, influencing behavior by offering rewards, and of its usefulness if it worked, the DOT launched the Belonitor trial. Each year, tailgating and speeding cause much irritation on roadways. Moreover, these violations often play a role in accidents and congestion. The Belonitor trial therefore focuses on two preferred modes of behavior: maintaining sufficient distance and maintaining the applicable maximum speed. The lease company LeasePlan Nederland N.V. (LPNL) fitted 62 lease cars with equipment that recorded whether drivers maintained sufficient distance from the car ahead and drove within the posted speed limit. The equipment included a display that continuously showed drivers their following distance and speed. LPNL rewarded lease-car drivers for good driving behavior over a 16-week period. The data obtained from surveys, interviews, and the in-car system indicate that feedback and rewards have a strong positive effect on safe driving behavior. The trial results also indicated differences in how drivers handle speed and following distance. In the Belonitor trial, DOT traffic safety objectives were successfully combined with profit goals of the lease company.
... Key words: behavioral momentum, developmental disabilities, extinction, noncontingent reinforcement, humans Behavioral momentum theory (Nevin, 1984(Nevin, , 1988(Nevin, , 1992Nevin, Mandell, & Atak, 1983) is a quantitative framework developed from basic research that has been used to describe and predict the persistence of operant behavior in the face of environmental change. This research has two major findings (Nevin, 1992): ...
... There is, however, an alternative interpretation of the prolonged capture duration for the uncertain cue that seems plausible at first glance, but must be refuted for several reasons: One could argue that longer dwell time on the partially reinforced distracter during unreinforced search trials was caused by a higher residual shock expectancy of this cue during extinction (and not influenced by uncertainty). Such an effect is referred to as the partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) and originally described the finding that an instrumental response is more resistant to extinction after partial reinforcement (Jenkins and Stanley, 1950;Nevin, 1988;Haselgrove et al., 2004). For our Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure one thus might assume that during extinction the shock-association of the partially reinforced cues at some point superseded the shock association of the continuously reinforced cue because of a slower extinction rate of the former and faster extinction of the latter. ...
We conducted a human fear conditioning experiment in which three different color cues were followed by an aversive electric shock on 0, 50, and 100% of the trials, and thus induced low (L), partial (P), and high (H) shock expectancy, respectively. The cues differed with respect to the strength of their shock association (L < P < H) and the uncertainty of their prediction (L < P > H). During conditioning we measured pupil dilation and ocular fixations to index differences in the attentional processing of the cues. After conditioning, the shock-associated colors were introduced as irrelevant distracters during visual search for a shape target while shocks were no longer administered and we analyzed the cues’ potential to capture and hold overt attention automatically. Our findings suggest that fear conditioning creates an automatic attention bias for the conditioned cues that depends on their correlation with the aversive outcome. This bias was exclusively linked to the strength of the cues’ shock association for the early attentional processing of cues in the visual periphery, but additionally was influenced by the uncertainty of the shock prediction after participants fixated on the cues. These findings are in accord with attentional learning theories that formalize how associative learning shapes automatic attention.
... El énfasis del AEC en las consecuencias de la conducta, es un aspecto que subraya la propiedad utilitanda del ambiente, en el que el desempeño del organismo modifica su entorno e induce cambios subsiguientes en su conducta. Modelos tales como la Ley de Igualación generalizada (Baum, 1974), principios matemáticos del reforzamiento (Killeen, 1994), momentum conductual (Nevin, 1988), decaimiento del valor del reforzador (Mazur, 1987), entre otros, incluyen parámetros, o al menos condiciones, vinculados a la consecuencia de la conducta (reforzador), por lo que constituyen modelos específicos de la propiedad utilitanda. No obstante, es posible analizar el comportamiento al margen de la propiedad utilitanda, y centrarse en la propiedad manipulanda dentro de la tradición operante. ...
This chapter analyzes the Edward C. Tolman’s concept of behavioral support (BS) from an ecological approach. It takes into account the correspondence between BS and the ecological concept of affordances coined by James J. Gibson. Some advances in the experimental analysis of behavior have focused on the properties of stimuli that determine behavioral patterns. The well-matched behavioral and ecological approaches are crystallized in the three properties of the objects that Tolman defined as meaningful for behavior: Discriminanda, manipulanda, and utilitanda. These properties acquire new significance for a wide conceptual and technological scope in behavioral sciences
... To account for differences in baseline response rates across phases for Gen and between components for Gavin and Jakob, we compared levels of responding during the NCR conditions and levels of resurgence during the EXT Only phases expressed as a proportion of baseline. This is the principal method to evaluate behavioral persistence in basic research on BMT (Mace et al., 2010;Nevin et al., 1990), because it controls for differences in response rates during baseline, which would otherwise obscure data analysis and make comparisons between NCR and EXT phases difficult (Nevin, 1988). We calculated proportion of baseline by dividing the obtained rates of responding during each session by the average rate of responding over the final five sessions from the immediately preceding baseline because the predictions of BMT are typically based on steady-state responding. ...
Noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) is typically implemented with extinction (EXT) for destructive behavior reinforced by social consequences and without EXT for destructive behavior reinforced by sensory consequences. Behavioral momentum theory (BMT) predicts that responding will be more persistent, and treatment relapse in the form of response resurgence more likely, when NCR is implemented without EXT due to the greater overall rate of reinforcement associated with this intervention. We used an analogue arrangement to test these predictions of BMT by comparing NCR implemented with and without EXT. For two of three participants, we observed more immediate reductions in responding during NCR without EXT. However, for all participants, NCR without EXT produced greater resurgence than NCR with EXT when we discontinued all reinforcers during an EXT Only phase, although there was variability in response patterns across and within participants. Implications for treatment of destructive behavior using NCR are discussed.
... Furthermore, rooted in the study of learning, authors conceptualized a v  m formulation of BM (e.g., Hubbard, 2016;Nevin, 1992). According to Nevin (1983Nevin ( , 1988Nevin ( , 1992 and Hubbard (2015Hubbard ( , 2016, BM represents the product of behavioral velocity and behavioral mass (or behavioral weight). Behavioral velocity would correspond to response rate resulting from operant conditioning, which represents the process whereby reinforcements (i.e., reward or punishment) shape the direction of behaviors. ...
... Coping actions such as task avoidance lead to withdrawal from attempts to solve problems. Withdrawal creates a negative behavioral momentum (e.g., student stops responding in class) that leads to a context of increased risk factors (Gresham, 1991(Gresham, , 2004Nevin, 1988;Witt, Daly, & Noell, 2000). Fredricks, Blumenfeld, and Paris (2004) note steep declines in motiva- tion, especially among students that represent minorities and students with disabilities. ...
... Humphreys (1939) first demonstrated it with Pavlovian conditioning, but it subsequently was replicated with operant behavior in both laboratory (e.g., Notterman, Schoenfeld, & Bersh, 1952;Zarcone, Branch, Hughes, & Pennypacker, 1997) and applied research (Lerman, Iwata, Shore, & Kahng, 1996). The effect depends on whether responding is measured in absolute or relative terms (e.g., and has been accounted for in different ways (see Nevin, 1988). ...
... As described in the companion chapter (Podlesnik and DeLeon,Chap. 12), BMT is a quantitative model developed from basic research used successfully to describe and predict the persistence (or resistance to change) of behavior in the face of environmental change (Nevin 1984(Nevin , 1988(Nevin , 1992Nevin et al. 1983). Nevin (1992) described two tenets to define BMT. ...
Behavioral momentum theory (BMT) is a quantitative model used to describe the persistence of behavior in the face of varying challenges (e.g., extinction, distraction). Generally, BMT predicts that responses that occur under stimulus conditions associated with denser reinforcement will persist in the face of challenges to a greater extent than responses that occur under conditions associated with leaner reinforcement. In this chapter, we consider ways in which BMT has made contact with the literature on behavioral intervention for persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disorders. We first review early studies that sought simply to establish the relevance of BMT for understanding behavior in these populations. We then discuss how the momentum framework has been implicated in programs to both strengthen adaptive behavior and decrease problem behavior. Recent basic research on BMT has revealed that the set of variables that predict response persistence similarly influence various forms of behavioral reemergence or relapse. We consider how these findings have recently been brought to bear on the concept of treatment relapse in neurodevelopmental disorders. Throughout the chapter, we offer a variety of questions raised about these relations and future avenues for research on the applied implications, many involving how BMT intersects with core diagnostic features of ASD.
... BMT (e.g. Nevin, 1984, 1988, 1992Nevin, Mandell, & Atak, 1983) is a quantitative model developed from basic research used successfully to describe and predict the persistence (or resistance to change) of behavior in the face of environmental change. Two tenets define BMT, as described by Nevin (1992). ...
The standard of care for severe behavioral problems of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities involves conducting assessments to determine the variables that give rise to and support problem behavior and hypothesis-driven intervention that addresses these causes. Conventional interventions involve disrupting the contingency between problem behavior and the consequences that support it, while establishing or strengthening alternative behavioral repertoires to displace problem behavior. Numerous studies have shown that these interventions can be effective, but the context in which researchers have demonstrated this effectiveness has not always mirrored what is practical or practicable in "the real world". In this chapter, we describe basic, translational, and applied studies that embrace the conventional strategy, while considering the influence of basic behavioral processes to shed light on how these interventions may go awry and, in some cases, what practitioners can do to enhance their effectiveness. The implications of recent basic research on several topics are considered, but we focus on behavioral momentum theory and the burgeoning field of behavioral economics.
... In birds, the PREE has been found also under a variety of conditions, including massed and spaced training trials. Under massed conditions, training is administered either in a free-operant situation with the key light continuously available for responding (e.g., Nevin, 1988) or with intervals between trials in the order of seconds to a few minutes in discrete-trial situations (Jenkins, 1962;Gonzalez and Champlin, 1974). Massed training conditions can produce behavioral effects that are consistent with emotional memory, but based upon nonemotional mechanisms. ...
Emotions are complex reactions that allow individuals to cope with significant positive and negative events. Research on emotion was pioneered by Darwin's work on emotional expressions in humans and animals. But Darwin was concerned mainly with facial and bodily expressions of significance for humans, citing mainly examples from mammals (e.g., apes, dogs, and cats). In birds, emotional expressions are less evident for a human observer, so a different approach is needed. Understanding avian emotions will provide key evolutionary information on the evolution of related behaviors and brain circuitry. Birds and mammals are thought to have evolved from different groups of Mesozoic reptiles, theropod dinosaurs and therapsids, respectively, and therefore, their common ancestor is likely to be a basal reptile living about 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous or Permian period. Yet, birds and mammals exhibit extensive convergence in terms of relative brain size, high levels of activity, sleep/wakefulness cycles, endothermy, and social behavior, among others. This article focuses on two basic emotions with negative valence: fear and frustration. Fear is related to the anticipation of dangerous or threatening stimuli (e.g., predators or aggressive conspecifics). Frustration is related to unexpected reward omissions or devaluations (e.g., loss of food or sexual resources). These results have implications for an understanding of the conditions that promote fear and frustration and for the evolution of supporting brain circuitry.
... There are several theories that attempt to address the underlying process of partial reinforcement effects on acquisition and extinction including those that attempt to address the contradictory PREE versus RPREE data, e.g. Nevin (1988); Nevin and Grace (2000) and behavioural momentum theory, and the sequential theory of Capaldi (1966Capaldi ( , 1967Capaldi ( , 1994. A subset of these theories provide mathematical models (Nevin 2012;Hochman and Erev 2013;Grossberg 1975Grossberg , 2003. ...
The partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) is an experimentally established phenomenon: behavioural response to a given stimulus is more persistent when previously inconsistently rewarded than when consistently rewarded. This phenomenon is, however, controversial in animal/human learning theory. Contradictory findings exist regarding when the PREE occurs. One body of research has found a within-subjects PREE, while another has found a within-subjects reversed PREE (RPREE). These opposing findings constitute what is considered the most important problem of PREE for theoreticians to explain. Here, we provide a neurocomputational account of the PREE, which helps to reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings of within-subjects experimental conditions. The performance of our model demonstrates how omission expectancy, learned according to low probability reward, comes to control response choice following discontinuation of reward presentation (extinction). We find that a PREE will occur when multiple responses become controlled by omission expectation in extinction, but not when only one omission-mediated response is available. Our model exploits the affective states of reward acquisition and reward omission expectancy in order to differentially classify stimuli and differentially mediate response choice. We demonstrate that stimulus-response (retrospective) and stimulus-expectation-response (prospective) routes are required to provide a necessary and sufficient explanation of the PREE versus RPREE data and that Omission representation is key for explaining the nonlinear nature of extinction data.
... For ethical reasons, we could not require participants to ante up with their own money, but they did risk losing money already earned by continuing to play during extinction. Indeed, many participants in both the near miss and far miss conditions continued to play for more than 100 trials after the extinction phase was initiated -which is consistent with the increased persistence seen following exposure to intermittent reinforcement schedules known as the partial-reinforcement effect (Nevin, 1988) -but this resulted in a loss of the money previously earned. Moreover, continuing to play involves an investment of time and energy. ...
In games of chance, a near miss is said to occur when feedback for what is otherwise a loss approximates a win. For instance, obtaining “cherry-cherry-lemon” on a slot machine could be considered a near miss. Sixty-six years after B. F. Skinner first proposed the idea that near-miss events might be reinforcing play in slot machines, belief in this ‘near-miss effect’ has remained strong despite the troublesome experimental literature. Rather than inferring its effects on behaviour, the present study reviewed and experimentally assessed the near-miss effect as it pertains to the gambling response. Experiment 1 used a tightly controlled resistance-to-extinction procedure in pigeons to evaluate the putative reinforcing effect of near misses relative to a control “far-miss” reel pattern. Experiment 2 extended Experiment 1’s procedure to human participants. The results of both failed to support the near-miss effect hypothesis. Experiment 3 used a further simplified procedure to assess the validity of the resistance-to-extinction paradigm when a probable conditional reinforcer was present on the reel stimuli. Although a clear discriminative function was obtained from the reel, subsequent testing in extinction revealed no reinforcing function of this stimulus.
... Finally, does the impact of stress on memory retrieval change with the adapted cortisol response often observed in chronic drug users 156? • While many studies suggest that drug-related memories are strongly encoded and persistent [156][157][158][159], little is known about the precise ways in which drugs alter memory encoding. The prominence of surprising rewards in memory recall [114,116] may arise from event boundaries introduced at encoding that establish the surprising reward memories as the primary event in a new context [115], a feature known to promote resistance to extinction [160]. However, the link between these findings and drug experiences has yet to be firmly established. ...
Although vivid memories of drug experiences are prevalent within clinical contexts and addiction folklore (“chasing the first high”), little is known about the relevance of cognitive processes governing memory retrieval to substance use disorder. Drawing on recent work that identifies episodic memory’s influence on decisions for reward, we propose a framework in which drug choices are biased by selective sampling of individual memories during two phases of addiction: (i) downward spiral into persistent use and (ii) relapse. Consideration of how memory retrieval influences the addiction process suggests novel treatment strategies. Rather than try to break learned associations between drug cues and drug rewards, treatment should aim to strengthen existing and/or create new associations between drug cues and drug-inconsistent rewards.
... 405). Nevin (1988) attempted to reconcile behavioral momentum theory with the PREE. He replicated the PREE in an experiment and then suggested that, even though extinction was faster immediately following continuous reinforcement, extinction following this initial decrement might be slower for continuous reinforcement. ...
The hypothesis that response strength might be measured by persistence of responding in the face of extinction was discredited in the 1960s because experiments showed that responding persists longer following intermittent reinforcers than following continuous reinforcers. Instead, researchers proposed that the longer persistence following intermittent reinforcers arises because intermittent reinforcement more closely resembles extinction—a discrimination theory. Attention to resistance to extinction revived because one observation seemed to support the persistence hypothesis: Following training on a multiple schedule with unequal components, responding usually persisted longer in the formerly richer component than in the formerly lean component. This observation represents an anomaly, however, because results with single schedules and concurrent schedules contradict it. We suggest that the difference in results arises because the multiple‐schedule procedure, while including extensive training on stimulus discrimination, includes no training on discrimination between food available and food unavailable, whereas comparable single‐ and concurrent‐schedule procedures include such training with repeated extinction. In Experiment 1, we replicated the original result, and in Experiment 2 showed that when the multiple‐schedule procedure includes training on food/no‐food discrimination, extinction following multiple schedules contradicts behavioral momentum theory and agrees with the discrimination theory and research with single and concurrent schedules.
... Another method that has been proposed to evaluate resurgence entails comparing challenging behavior during extinction to challenging behavior during treatment, rather than baseline (Marsteller and St. Peter 2012;Volkert et al. 2009). Several basic studies have expressed data as a proportion of baseline method to evaluate behavioral relapse and persistence (Mace et al. 2010;Nevin 1988;Nevin et al. 1990). Also, intervention procedures varied across the included studies and within included participants, whereas baseline phases consisted of similar procedures. ...
Functional communication training (FCT) is highly effective in reducing challenging behavior and increasing appropriate communication in children with developmental disabilities. However, the challenging behavior may re-occur following successful treatment with functional communication training when the functional communication response contacts extinction. Therefore, it is imperative to evaluate the variables that reduce resurgence of challenging behavior following successful treatment. For the current review, the systematic search yielded 14 articles from the current literature that evaluated resurgence following functional communication training. The effect of demand fading, the language of instruction, the presence of stimuli associated with the intervention, previous exposures to extinction, schedule of reinforcement during baseline, and reinforcing multiple mands were evaluated in the present literature review. Overall, relatively few applied studies with human participants have evaluated variables that affect resurgence. It is imperative that future research utilizes systematic manipulation to identify variables that reduce the resurgence of challenging behavior. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.
... Many early studies that displayed the increase in responses during a partial reinforcement schedule used between-subjects laboratory designs (Grosslight and Child, 1947;Mowrer and Jones, 1945;Pavilik and Flora, 1993). However, studies that have used within-subjects design (Nevin 1988;Papini, Thomas and McVicar, 2002;Svartdal, 2000) and field research (Latham and Dossett, 1978;Pritchard, Hollenback and DeLeo, 1980;Yukl, Latham and Pursell, 1976) have reported that partial reinforcement schedules impair rather than improve performance. The conflicting findings surrounding partial reinforcement schedules' effects on behaviour change leaves questions as to whether partial reinforcement is as effective as B.F Skinner had concluded. ...
As Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have become more integrated into the mod- ern way of life, daily usage of these platforms have increased. For some, in- creased usage has become problematic and potentially addictive. Technology insiders have suggested that a combination of the pull-to-refresh behaviour, akin to motion of slot machines, and partial reinforcement of SNS content is leading to increased usage online. This dissertation takes an exploratory approach to investigate how the the pull-to-refresh feature and partially re- warding nature of timeline content can have an impact on user behaviours which might contribute to addictive usage. An application named ‘Moments’ was developed and used in an empirical study to monitor user behaviours through psychoinformatic techniques on a simulated SNS timeline. Findings suggested that neither the pull-to-refresh feature, nor a partially rewarding schedule of timeline content had any significant impact on user refresh be- haviours compared to alternatives. However, general trends identified greater refresh behaviours from a combination of pull-to-refresh and continuous rein- forcement schedules, providing a good basis from which future research within this area can extend.
... Variables that influence behavioral momentum include schedule of reinforcement, reinforcement rate, whether a preceding task exhibited a typically low level or high level of compliance, reinforcer quality, presence of noncontingent reinforcement, presence of alternative reinforcement, extinction, resurgence, attention, and psychopathology (for review, Hubbard, 2015a). Also, unlike other forms of momentum-like effects, behavioral momentum is firmly grounded in a mathematical framework (Nevin, 1988(Nevin, , 1992(Nevin, , 2012Nevin & Shahan, 2011) and in learning theory (Nevin, 1992;Nevin & Grace, 2000). ...
In a momentum-like effect, the likely future state of a current action or process is extrapolated. Momentum-like effects have been suggested to reflect dynamic processes, but such effects have not often been discussed in the broader literature on dynamic approaches to perception, cognition, and action. Several momentum-like effects are briefly described, and attempts to formulate dynamic theories of such effects are considered. Issues regarding dynamic representation that are relevant for theories of momentum-like effects (whether contingencies are invariant, stochastic, or arbitrary; bridging gaps between perception and action and between action and reinforcement; adaptiveness of such effects; influences of an observer’s knowledge, beliefs, and expectations; relationship of momentum-like effects to naïve physics and perception of causality) are discussed. Issues highlighted by a consideration of momentum-like effects relevant for dynamic approaches to other phenomena (multiple meanings and senses of “dynamic,” different meanings and connotations of “continuation” and “extrapolation,” perceptual inference of subjective or objective consequences, importance of time scale and temporal information, importance of the computational theory level, momentum-like effects as an example of predictive processing) are also discussed. Momentum-like effects provide examples of relatively simple dynamic processes that reveal and highlight issues relevant for study of dynamic approaches in a wide range of perceptual, cognitive, and action phenomena.
... A CS that had been partially reinforced is slower to extinguish than a CS that had been continuously reinforced (Humphreys, 1939). This PREE has been demonstrated in many species and protocols (e.g., Nevin, 1988;Pavlik & Carlton, 1965;Pittenger & Pavlik, 1988;Sangha, McComb, Scheibenstock, Johannes, & Lukowiak, 2002), and has been attributed to a range of processes (e.g., Amsel, 1967;Capaldi, 1967;Chan & Harris, 2019;Harris, Kwok, & Gottlieb, 2019). According to SOP, nonreinforced trials in acquisition increase the strength of the context-CS association, which reduces the proportion of CS elements in A1 on subsequent trials and, thereby, the rate of associative change in extinction. ...
The present study used simulations to examine whether Wagner's Standard Operating Procedures or Sometimes Opponent Processes (SOP) model explains various extinction phenomena. These included the so-called signature characteristics of extinction-renewal, reinstatement, and spontaneous recovery-as well as the effects on extinction of manipulations such as preexposure, the interval between extinction trials, the rate at which reinforcement ceases, and the presence of other stimuli. The simulations showed that SOP accounts for the effects of each of these manipulations. It does so for 2 reasons. First, the form of stimulus representation and rules for generating associative change mean that SOP can explain conditioning phenomena by appeal to changes in processing of both conditioned (CS) and unconditioned (US) stimuli, in contrast to other theories which confine changes in processing to either the CS (e.g., attentional theories) or the US (e.g., the Rescorla-Wagner model). Second, the processes that generate associative change in SOP are at least partially independent of those that generate performance. Hence, stimuli that differ in associative strength can extinguish at the same rate, and stimuli with equal associative strength can undergo different amounts of renewal, reinstatement or recovery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... This "partial reinforcement extinction effect" drove research for a generation, with many explanations tendered, such as generalization decrement-decreased frequency of reinforcement is more noticeable coming from continuous reinforcement than from intermittent reinforcement. Other conditions and measures show the reverse effect, as studied in behavioral momentum theory (Nevin, 1988). In addition, intermittent reinforcement on ratio schedules will often yield higher response rates than does continuous reinforcement, another problematic effect that foiled Skinner's development of his model reflex reserve (Killeen, 1988). ...
Two of Timberlake's major contributions, amongst numerous other good notes, are Behavior Regulation Theory (BRT), and Behavior Systems Theory (BST). BRT was a refinement of the Premack Principle. What both got right was that reinforcers are responses, not stimuli. For BRT, they were responses that were occurring below the rate at which they otherwise would given free access to them. BST was a larger ethological framework for our science of behavior. We have always needed it, as it opens an important window on our field. With that window closed, it is easy to stumble over a half-dozen anomalies in the dark, ones that we say humph to, scratch our heads, and then move on. When illuminated by BST, however, such anomalies become keys to a deeper understanding of our subject. This paper reviews numerous anomalies that make sense within the joint framework of BST and BRT, and Dickinson's Dual-Process theory of learned behavior. No longer anomalous in that context, all that is now left to do is test the validity and productivity of this general framework for those many strange cases.
... Baum (2012) described a discriminationbased account of resistance to extinction and cited the partial-reinforcement extinction effect (PREE; see Sutherland & Mackintosh, 1971; see also Hochman & Erev, 2013, for a recent treatment) as principal support for his position. The PREE is the finding that resistance to extinction tends to be greater following experience with intermittent reinforcement schedules than following continuous reinforcement (see, e.g., Nevin & Grace, 2005, Experiment 1; though, see also Nevin, 1988, whose reanalysis of data from several experiments reporting the PREE calls into question the robustness of the finding). More generally, if behavior is trained and subsequently extinguished in single schedules of reinforcement, resistance to extinction has been shown to be negatively related to preextinction reinforcer rates, even when the schedules compared both deliver reinforcement intermittently (see, e.g., Cohen, 1998;Cohen et al., 1993;Craig & Shahan, 2016a;Shull & Grimes, 2006). ...
The present experiments assessed whether resistance to extinction of pigeons' key pecking decreased across repeated extinction tests. An additional impetus for this research was to determine how the quantitative framework provided by behavioral momentum theory might be used to describe any such changes across tests. Pigeons pecked keys in two‐component multiple schedules (one component associated with a higher reinforcer rate and the other with a lower rate) in which baseline and extinction conditions alternated. In Experiment 1, baseline and extinction conditions alternated every session, and, in Experiment 2, these conditions lasted for 10 and 7 sessions, respectively. Resistance to extinction decreased across successive extinction conditions in both experiments. Fits of the behavioral‐momentum based model of extinction to the data returned uncertain results in Experiment 1 but implicated both generalization decrement and response–reinforcer contingency termination as the possible mechanisms responsible for behavior change in Experiment 2. Thus, these data suggest that experimental manipulations that affect discrimination of changes in reinforcement contingencies may influence resistance to extinction by modulating the disruptive impacts of removing reinforcers from the experimental context and of suspending response–reinforcer contingencies.
... The right-most plot shows the mean cumulative responses across the three sessions of extinction testing. Circles and diamonds indicate the S D 80% and S D 20% extinction treatments respectively participants in both the near-miss and far-miss conditions continued to play for more than 100 trials after the extinction phase was initiated-which is consistent with the increased persistence seen following exposure to intermittent reinforcement schedules known as the partial-reinforcement effect (Nevin 1988)-but this resulted in a loss of the money previously earned. Moreover, continuing to play involved an investment of time and energy. ...
In games of chance, a near miss is said to occur when feedback for a loss approximates a win. For instance, obtaining "cherry-cherry-lemon" on a slot machine could be considered a near miss. Sixty-six years ago, B.F. Skinner first proposed the idea that near-miss events might reinforce continued play in slot machines, and despite some inconsistencies in the experimental literature, belief in this "near-miss effect" has remained strong. In the present manuscript, we will review this literature and present experimental assessments of the near-miss effect on the frequency of the gambling response. Experiment 1 used a tightly controlled resistance-to-extinction procedure in pigeons to evaluate the putative reinforcing effect of near misses relative to a control "far-miss" reel pattern. Experiment 2 extended Experiment 1's procedure to human participants. The results of both experiments failed to support the near-miss effect hypothesis. Experiment 3 used a further simplified procedure to assess the validity of the resistance-to-extinction paradigm when a probable conditional reinforcer was present on the reel stimuli. Although a clear conditional response was obtained from the reel, subsequent testing in extinction revealed no conditionally reinforcing function of this stimulus on operant response frequency.
“Arte” é uma designação geral para um amplo conjunto de classes de comportamentos pre- sentes em todas as culturas humanas, desde o início de sua história. Não obstante, a análise do comportamento pouco tem se dedicado à compreensão das funções da arte. Neste ensaio interpretativo, busco identificar al- gumas das possíveis funções da arte musical para seus ouvintes, utilizando como fontes estudos sobre vários aspectos da música e, em alguns momentos, minha própria experiência como ouvinte e observador de ouvintes de música. Concluo que a música desempenha diversas funções socialmente e pessoalmente relevantes para seus ouvintes, envolvendo um amplo espectro de relações comportamentais, desde movimentos culturais e políticos até processos via de regra tidos como íntimos e individuais, como emoção, memória e fanta- sia. Uma compreensão mais refinada de tais relações comportamentais pode auxiliar ana- listas do comportamento a identificar a rele- vância dos estímulos musicais e a utilizá-los como parte de suas intervenções.
Dogs are trained for a variety of working roles including assistance, protection, and detection work. Many canine working roles, in their modern iterations, were developed at the turn of the 20th century and training practices have since largely been passed down from trainer to trainer. In parallel, research in psychology has advanced our understanding of animal behavior, and specifically canine learning and cognition, over the last 20 years; however, this field has had little focus or practical impact on working dog training. The aims of this narrative review are to (1) orient the reader to key advances in animal behavior that we view as having important implications for working dog training, (2) highlight where such information is already implemented, and (3) indicate areas for future collaborative research bridging the gap between research and practice. Through a selective review of research on canine learning and behavior and training of working dogs, we hope to combine advances from scientists and practitioners to lead to better, more targeted, and functional research for working dogs.
O laboratório didático de Análise Experimental do Comportamento (AEC) tem papel importante para a formação do psicólogo, pois constitui-se em oportunidade para o estudante vivenciar os princípios básicos do comportamento e desenvolver habilidades relacionadas a prática profissional e experimental em psicologia. Neste contexto, o uso de animais não humanos, em geral ratos, se mostra pertinente por favorecer o controle de variáveis. Entretanto, o custo de manutenção do laboratório com ratos e o maior rigor na legislação sobre o tema têm levado muitos cursos à adoção de procedimentos alternativos diversos, não necessariamente norteados pelos mesmos princípios didático-pedagógicos. Este capítulo discute a situação atual do laboratório didático de AEC no Brasil, buscando apontar estratégias tanto para a manutenção do laboratório tradicional quanto para o desenvolvimento de práticas alternativas. Discute-se ainda a necessidade de se estabelecer um currículo alternativo válido para nortear as práticas de laboratório que fogem ao modelo tradicional com ratos.
Práticas culturais de desenvolvimento sustentável são aquelas que atendem às necessidades de uma população atual sem comprometer a sobrevivência ou qualidade de vida de gerações futuras. Culturas contemporâneas são fortemente caracterizadas por arranjos de contingências sociais que resultam em alta concorrência entre produção de consequências que favorecem indivíduos e aquelas que beneficiam o grupo. Tais concorrências sociais vêm sendo estudados na análise comportamental da cultura a partir de arranjos experimentais como (1) dilema dos comuns; (2) autocontrole ético; e (3) autocontrole cultural. O presente trabalho discute as possibilidades de transposição do conhecimento advindo da análise experimental de práticas culturais para o delineamento de culturas voltadas ao desenvolvimento sustentável. Discute-se interlocuções e contribuições entre as áreas mencionadas e possíveis implicações para o planejamento cultural. Espera-se que as discussões apresentadas apontem caminhos de pesquisas aplicadas e, posteriormente, tecnologia comportamental para o delineamento de culturais sustentáveis.
The simplest reinforcement procedure to arrange is one where each instance of a class of response is reinforced; such a procedure is called continuous reinforcement. It is also possible to arrange procedures so that some instances of the response class are reinforced and other instances are not (i.e., intermittent reinforcement procedures). The various procedures for arranging reinforcers in relation to behavior and to other events are known collectively as schedules of reinforcement.
To examine schedule control over following instructions comprised of novel combinations of verbal stimuli, three children, from 8 to 10 years old, received either continuous or intermittent reinforcement for a chain of buying and then following such instructions. Later, a series of training-extinction tests was conducted. During the training trials, the chain produced either continuous or intermittent reinforcement. During the extinction trials, buying produced instructions but following instructions never produced reinforcement. For one subject, a partial reinforcement extinction effect was detected for the chain. For two subjects, a stimulus correlated with extinction onset enhanced schedule control. Overall, the frequency of the chain covaried with the probability of reinforcement. The schedule effects detected and the methodology used extend the generality of an operant interpretation of instruction following to instructions comprised of novel combinations of verbal stimuli.
Behavioural momentum refers to the tendency for reinforced behaviour to persist when conditions are altered. Research on persistence with pigeons as subjects has suggested that response rate under steady-state conditions and its persistence when conditions are altered are independent aspects of behaviour, with response rate determined by response-reinforcer contingencies and persistence determined by stimulus-reinforcer contingencies. These results have been replicated with humans in a natural setting, and may therefore be relevant to clinical practice. The following prescriptions are suggested by the research results: (a) To eliminate undesirable behaviour, it is not sufficient to reinforce alternative behaviour in the same setting because this may actually enhance persistence of the undesired response; change to a new setting may also be necessary; (b) to establish desirable behaviour, the behaviour should be reinforced frequently, and to make it persistent, both the therapeutic and natural environments should be highly correlated with reinforcement.
“I'd warned her that intellectuals didn't count for much in the scheme of things: but academics are like the clergy in their blind conviction that their vocation has relevance to the rest of the world.” (McCauley, 1990).
In the beginning, the founders of behaviour therapy were quite explicit about the link between basic laboratory research and their new therapies (Eysenck, 1960; Wolpe, 1958). Their claim that behaviour therapy was based on “modern learning theory” was not, however, without controversy (e.g., Breger & McGaugh, 1965; London, 1972); but while the logical necessity for appeal to laboratory research on learning might have been questioned (Breger & McGaugh, 1965), the historical contingencies linking Pavlov's dogs, Masserman's cats, and Wolpe's first systematic desensitisation patients can scarcely be questioned (American Psychological Association, 1980; Kazdin, 1978).
It is equally clear that there was a similar close historical link between laboratory studies of operant behaviour, especially by Skinner and his students, and the development of behaviour modification applications such as reinforcement therapy and the token economy (Kazdin, 1978; Krasner 1971; Skinner, 1953). Again, the continuing necessity for behaviour modification to be linked to basic research in operant behaviour has been challenged (Azrin, 1977; cf. Deitz, 1978) but the historic fact of the relationship is well established (Krasner, 1971).
In 2003, Michael C. Lewis published the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, detailing Billy Beane’s (the general manager of the Oakland Athletics Major League Baseball [MLB] team) contemporary use of advanced statistical methods to draft or select players and to devise strategic approaches to game play in hope of launching the team into the competitive echelon of the MLB, despite the numerous odds against them. To the novice reader or sports enthusiast, this simple description seems an endearing tale of an underdog’s success, and rightly so – the Oakland Athletic’s, with a salary budget of only $41 million, competed against teams with much higher salaries, such as the New York Yankees with $200 million to spend on its players. Transcending beyond this “triumph over adversity” tale, however, Lewis’s Moneyball has become a panacea for analytically maximizing outcomes from an economic approach.
Starting in the 1980s, several researchers have noted a gap between basic and applied research in behavior analysis. Following a trend in other sciences, basic research, directed towards precise knowledge of basic principles, has produced findings deemed too abstract to be incorporated in applied research. Translational research emerged as an attempt to relate basic findings with applied research and technological development. This article describes the relation between basic and applied science and the route towards the ideal of an experimental science in psychology. It also describes how the experimental analysis of behavior departed from its original interest in both basic and applied issues in favor of basic principles in non-human animal research. Previous literature suggests that basic researchers can contribute to the translation of principles into applications by developing non-human animal models of human behavior. This article presents examples of models that succeeded in translating daily life into laboratory preparations by providing a functional and not only a structural comparison of human and non-human animal behavior.
This paper describes a quantitative analytic theory of development. Two of the major contributions that such a developmental theory can make are: a) an explanation of why certain tasks have to be acquired earlier than others (developmental sequences) and b) an account, based on selectionist principles, of the biological, cultural, organizational and individual psychology of performance. The behaviorism that can encompass these two goals incorporates quantitative analysis, where the assumptions are explicit and
mathematically describable, and the measures of performance are quantitative. The two largest differences in this theory from others occur in the deliberate separation of task and performance, and the simplification of the basic unit of analysis, which in this theory is the event rather than the behavior or the stimulus and response. The definition of events is explicit and simple, containing very few assumptions.
The future actions, behaviors, and outcomes of objects, individuals, and processes can often be anticipated, and some of these anticipations have been hypothesized to result from momentum-like effects. Five types of momentum-like effects (representational momentum, operational momentum, attentional momentum, behavioral momentum, psychological momentum) are briefly described. Potential similarities involving properties of momentum-like effects (continuation, coherence, role of chance or guessing, role of sensory processing, imperviousness to practice or error feedback, shifts in memory for position, effects of changes in velocity, rapid occurrence, effects of retention interval, attachment to an object rather than an abstract frame of reference, nonrigid transformation) are described, and potential constraints on a future theory of momentum-like effects (dynamic representation, nature of extrapolation, sensitivity to environmental contingencies, bridging gaps between stimulus and response, increasing adaptiveness to the environment, serving as a heuristic for perception and action, insensitivity to stimulus format, importance of subjective consequences, role of knowledge and belief, automaticity of occurrence, properties of functional architecture) are discussed. The similarity and ubiquity of momentum-like effects suggests such effects might result from a single or small number of mechanisms that operate over different dimensions, modalities, and time-scales and provide a fundamental adaptation for perception and action.
This is a historical note on a precursor of the concept of behavioral momentum in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in particular, Charles B. description of it in terms of behavioral durability. The note is based largely on two email exchanges we had with John A. (Tony) Nevin, who offered insights on behavioral momentum as a term and a concept that are fit to be public on the occasion of this issue of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior in his honor. Nevin addressed graduate work at Columbia University, the Newtonian analogy, the term behavioral momentum, and precursors of his work that are now lost in history. Ferster's description, though, was more compellingly modern than the others and the one first based in research on human operant behavior.
In anxiety, maladaptive avoidance behavior provides for near-perfect controllability of potential threat. There has been little laboratory-based treatment research conducted on controllability as a contributing factor in the transition from adaptive to maladaptive avoidance. Here, we investigated for the first time whether partial reinforcement rate, or the reliability of avoidance at controlling or preventing contact with an aversive event, influences subsequent extinction of avoidance in humans. Five groups of participants were exposed to different partial reinforcement rates where avoidance cancelled upcoming shock on 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% or 0% of trials. During extinction, all shocks were withheld. Avoidance behavior, online shock expectancy ratings and skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured throughout. We found that avoidance was a function of relative controllability: higher reinforcement rate groups engaged in significantly more extinction-resistant avoidance than lower reinforcement groups, and shock expectancy was inversely related with reinforcement rate during avoidance acquisition. Partial reinforcement effects were not evident in SCRs. Overall, the current study highlights the clinical relevance of laboratory-based treatment research on partial reinforcement or controllability effects on extinction of avoidance.
Pavlovian conditioning is sensitive to the temporal relationship between conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US). This has motivated models that describe learning as a process that continuously updates associative strength during the trial or specifically encodes the CS-US interval. These models predict that extinction of responding is also continuous, such that response loss is proportional to the cumulative duration of exposure to the CS without the US. We review evidence showing that this prediction is incorrect, and that extinction is trial-based rather than time-based. We also present two experiments that test the importance of trials versus time on the Partial Reinforcement Extinction Effect (PREE), in which responding extinguishes more slowly for a CS that was inconsistently reinforced with the US than for a consistently reinforced one. We show that increasing the number of extinction trials of the partially reinforced CS, relative to the consistently reinforced CS, overcomes the PREE. However, increasing the duration of extinction trials by the same amount does not overcome the PREE. We conclude that animals learn about the likelihood of the US per trial during conditioning, and learn trial-by-trial about the absence of the US during extinction. Moreover, what they learn about the likelihood of the US during conditioning affects how sensitive they are to the absence of the US during extinction.
Considering the end of the penalty of deprivation of liberty and its resocializing
function, passage through a prison and/or penitentiary establishment can only
imply a restriction in the free mobility of persons, for which reason the State must
guarantee all persons deprived of liberty the effective enjoyment of rights that
are not limited by the criminal penalty (Tortora, 2010).
The effective enjoyment of human rights by persons deprived of their liberty has been affected by different circumstances inherent to the environment in
which they are deprived of their liberty and to the assistance policies implemented within the prison. The Constitutional Court has declared the unconstitutional
situation in the Colombian prison and jail system. The first declaration took place
in 1998 through Ruling T-153, the second in 2013 through Ruling T-388 when it
verified that these situations of violation of the human rights of persons deprived
of liberty had not been overcome, and finally, in 2015 the court ratified the state of
affairs unconstitutional through Ruling T-762. Among the various factors or processes that the prison and jail system in Colombia is experiencing, and which have
contributed to this declaration of unconstitutionality, is the level of overcrowding
in the various national facilities, which directly affects the quality and quantity of
services provided to the prison population. Persons deprived of their liberty as
a result of the judicial decision or determination begin to experience a series of
effects on their life project, their support networks, their physical and emotional
health, their privacy, and their free mobility, among others (Zullini, 2014).
To this end, they have been referred to as “prisionalization effects” and efforts
have been made to counteract them through the implementation of family care,
health, food and life project programmes, among others. These programmes are
implemented in prisons and jails and are aimed at the entire prison population,
regardless of their legal status (Villamil, 2017). Based on these three elements or
debates, this symposium aims to answer the question of whether it is possible
to talk about welfare in prison.
During two retreats in 2017 and 2020, a group of international scientists convened to explore the Human-Animal Bond. The meetings, hosted by the Wallis Annenberg PetSpace Leadership Institute, took a broad view of the human-dog relationship and how interactions between the two may benefit us medically, psychologically or through their service as working dogs (e.g. guide dogs, explosive detection, search and rescue, cancer detection). This Frontiers’ Special Topic has collated the presentations into a broad collection of 14 theoretical and review papers summarizing the latest research and practice in the historical development of our deepening bond with dogs, the physiological and psychological changes that occur during human-dog interactions (to both humans and dogs) as well as the selection, training and welfare of companion animals and working dogs. The overarching goals of this collection are to contribute to the current standard of understanding of human-animal interaction, suggest future directions in applied research, and to consider the interdisciplinary societal implications of the findings.
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