COMPARING METHODS OF IDENTIFYING REINFORCING STIMULI IN SCHOOL CONSULTATION

Reinforcement-based interventions, the most frequently used treatments for school-age children, rely on accurately identifying stimuli that will serve to reinforce appropriate classroom behavior. Research has consistently demonstrated that the results from a forced-choice pairing procedure are the best predictors of reinforcing stimuli. Interestingly, systematic evaluation of potential reinforcers is rarely implemented in the school consultation setting. Considering the importance of the reinforcer on reinforcement-based interventions, and the literature focusing on the significance of the selection procedure on accurately identifying a reinforcer, this is concerning. The purpose of these two studies was to examine the effectiveness of identifying reinforcing stimuli for students in the consultation setting using two different methods: stimulus forced-choice and asking the teacher to identify potential reinforcers. The effectiveness of the selected stimuli as reinforcers was studied on two student outcomes: academic production and on-task behavior. The results of the two studies suggested that the reinforcers selected using a forced-choice procedure were more effective than the reinforcers selected from a teacher-identification procedure. Further, results indicated that although stimuli derived from both reinforcer assessment methods were useful at increasing rates of desired behavior, stimuli derived from the forced-choice reinforcer assessment were more consistently effective.     

Simultaneous Statistical Tests on Categorical Data

Educable mentally retarded children and normal children of average intelligence were compared in performance on the Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale. The purpose of the study was to determine the following: 1.) a measure of long-term test-retest reliability, 2.) suitability of the scale with a younger chronological age group, and 3.) comparative data on differences in anxiety scores between normal and retarded children.Controls for procedural modifications, residential and educational status, sex differences, chronological age range, and range of IQ were employed. Test-retest correlations indicated that the scale was reliable for normal Ss but not for the retarded Ss. CMAS effects based on age and IQ did exist. Older retardates received higher anxiety scores than younger retardates on Test 2, while Test 1 difference was not significant. Retarded children obtained higher anxiety scores than normal children on Test 1. It was concluded that reliability over a 10-month period is poor for retarded Ss. Moreover, the instrument is of doubtful utility with younger retarded Ss.     

Acquisition and maintenance of Sidman avoidance with paired rat subjects

Rat Ss were used to study the acquisition and maintenance of Sidman avoidance as a function of either single or paired training. Ss receiving paired training failed to acquire the leverpress response even after a block of individual training sessions. Within the paired training condition, Ss that were housed separately evidenced better acquisition than Ss housed as pairs. When Ss that were efficiently avoiding under individual training conditions were paired, avoidance was severely disrupted.     

Effects of partial vs consistent reward in noncontingent pairings of stimuli with reward: A noncontingently produced positive contrast effect

Rats received pairings of two stimuli with reward noncontingently in the Skinner box. During noncontingent pairings, the bar was immobilized. For Group CC 100% of the presentations of both stimuli were rewarded (S₁ ±, S₂ ±), for Group PP 50% of the presentations of each stimulus were rewarded (S₁, ±, S₂±), and for Group PC one stimulus was followed by reward on 50% of its presentations, while the second stimulus was followed by reward on 100% of its presentations (S₁ ±, S₂ ±). A fourth group received the stimuli and reward nonpaired. In a subsequent rewarded test phase, the response facilitating effects of the stimuli were evaluated. In the test phase all groups that received reward paired with S₁, and S₂ performed better in the presence of S₁ and S₂ than the group for which the stimuli were not paired with reward. For groups that received the stimuli paired with reward, a difference due to schedule of reward occurred when schedule of reward was varied within Ss (Group PC), but not when varied between Ss (Group PP vs Group CC). The specific form of this finding was that Group PC’s performance in the presence of S₂ ± was more vigorous than its performance in the presence of S₁ ± and was more vigorous than the performance of Groups PP and CC to S₂. Group PC’s performance to S₁ ± did not differ from that of Groups PP and CC to S₁.     

Autoshaping of initial feeding and drinking reactions in newly hatched chicks

Newly hatched chicks were force-fed food and water throughout rearing, and food, water, or sand reinforcers during exposure to an omission-training procedure. The chicks were thus prevented from performing approach and contact responses to the reinforcer at any time in their lives. Nevertheless, the subjects displayed approach and species-specific feeding or drinking reactions directed toward an illuminated key paired with food or water, but not with sand. Illumination of a key either uncorrelated or negatively correlated with food or water did not engender appreciable responding. Feeding and drinking reactions were topographically distinct, determined by the type of reinforcer, but were not elicited by the reinforcer. These findings support a “learned release” view of autoshaping, according to which phylogenetically preorganized behavior patterns are triggered by distal stimuli paired with biologically significant proximal stimulation, and suggest a close relationship between autoshaping and primitive instances of visual object recognition.     

Pavlovian appetitive conditioning under curare in rats

A CS was paired with rewarding intracranial stimulation while Ss were immobilized by curare. Tests of the activity response to the CS were carried out before and after conditioning. With either simple or discriminative conditioning, activity to the rewarded CS increased after training. These results are comparable to those in studies using food reward and support the hypothesis that a central motivational state is conditioned to stimuli preceding reward.     

Value Systems of Two Academically Contrasted Groups of College Men

This study investigates the adequacy of predicting differential value systems of college students from their American College Test (ACT) scores. Sixty male college Ss were divided into two groups based on ACT scores: a.) high English-low math group, and b.) high math-low English group. The Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values, which measures six dominant values in personality, was administered to each of the two groups. Comparison of mean scores on each scale indicated that only the Theoretical scale distinguished between the two groups, scores for Group II being higher than scores for Group I. Stepwise discriminant analysis indicated, however, that scores on the Theoretical scale were highest for Group II, whereas scores on the Political and Social scales were highest for Group I. The Religious, Economic, and Aesthetic scales were not significantly different in the two groups.     

Autoshaping in the rhesus monkey

With one exception, published attempts to demonstrate autoshaping in mammals have been complicated by a superimposed instrumental contingency or by a failure to control for unconditioned changes in the rate of responding. In this study five monkeys came to touch and bite a Pavlovian CS paired with food. Four of the Ss, given differential stimuli, demonstrated that stimulus control could be obtained over the autoshaped response. Examination of typical topographies suggests that the responses resembled consummatory behavior elicited by food and that keypressing is not simply a generalized form of magazine response.     

Sign-tracking (autoshaping) in rats: A comparison of cocaine and food as unconditioned stimuli

A series of experiments was performed to determine whether sign-tracking would occur in rats with intravenous (i.v.) cocaine as the unconditioned stimulus. In Experiment 1, a retractable lever paired with food produced strong sign-tracking, but a lever paired with one of three doses of i.v. cocaine did not elicit any approach or contact behavior. Experiment 2 demonstrated that doses of cocaine that did not elicit sign-tracking would function as a positive reinforcer for a lever contact operant. In Experiment 3, an artificialconsummatory response was added to make the cocaine reinforcement episode more behaviorally comparable to that occasioned by food. Although the rats readily performed this response when it was required to receive cocaine infusions, they still did not contact a lever that signaled the availability of these infusions. It appears that cocaine is different from other positive reinforcers (e.g., food, water, warmth, or intracranial stimulation) in that it will not produce sign-tracking in rats.     

Pigeons’ short-term memories for surprising vs. expected reinforcement and nonreinforcement

Pigeons performed a delayed matching-to-sample task in which they matched red and green disks as comparison stimuli to samples of food and no food. The birds were also taught a discrimination between two lines: vertical (S+) followed by food and horizontal (S?) followed by no food. The two kinds of trials were then chained in infrequent probes such that (a) S+ and S? preceded samples of food and no food, (b) a longer than usual delay occurred, and then, (c) the comparison stimuli were presented. Therefore, in probes when S+ preceded food and S? preceded no food, the samples were “expected. ” But in probes when S+ signaled no food and S? signaled food, the samples were “surprising. ” Matching to surprising samples was more accurate than matching to expected samples. This result completes a pattern of findings implying that surprising reinforcers enhance learning and also persist (are longer rehearsed) in short-term memory.     

Stimulus duration and conditioned reinforcing value measured by a learning-tests procedure

The relationship between the duration of stimuli and their conditioned reinforcing effect was investigated using a learning-tests procedure. In Experiment 1, stimuli were the same duration on training (stimulus → reward) and test (choice response → stimulus). Ten- and 30-sec stimuli provided effective differential conditioned reinforcement but 3-sec stimuli did not. In Experiment 2, different pigeons had each combination of the 3- and 30-sec stimuli on training and test trials. Evidence of conditioned reinforcement was obtained only for the birds with 30-sec stimuli on both training and test. The results were interpreted as indicating that stimuli become effective conditioned reinforcers on test trials only when their duration exceeds the duration of differential short-term memory cues resulting from a difference in the events that precede them on training and test trials.     

Reinforcer Preferences of Secondary Students with Disabilities

WHILE TEACHERS are often the ones who select the objects, events and activities that serve as potential reinforcers in their contingency management systems, research indicates that teachers are not always accurate in their selection of reinforcers that are motivating to their students. This study examined the reinforcement preferences of 110 secondary students with disabilities. Respondents rated 90 potential reinforcers using a three‐point Likert scale. Results indicated that while student preferences represent a range of reinforcers within existing reinforcement hierarchies, the sample group tended to prefer less intrusive higher level reinforcers. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

A comprehensive evaluation method of diesel engine sound quality based on paired comparison,uniform design sampling,and improved analytic hierarchy process

The paired comparison (PC) is an easy and effective way to distinguish the nuances among sound stimuli of diesel engine in sound quality subjective evaluation. However, the PC method is inefficient for the subjective evaluation of large quantities of stimulus or to rank the results of overall perception of sound stimuli. To overcome the shortcoming of the PC method, this paper presents a comprehensive evaluation method of diesel engine sound quality based on the PC method, uniform design sampling (UDS), and the improved analytic hierarchy process (AHP). An hierarchical tree of comprehensive evaluation models of diesel engine sound quality is constructed and simplified through UDS to ensure that the sound sample size is in the application range of the PC method or the grouped paired-wise comparison (GPC) method. An improved AHP is developed by introducing a new method calculating the relative weight based on evaluators’ preference order instead of the traditional 1–9 scale method, which reduces subjective liberty and difficulty of the consistency of the judgment matrix meeting the requirement, and the requirements of evaluators’ specialized knowledge. With three diesel engines’ noise stimuli as example, a realization of sound quality comprehensive evaluation based on UDS-AHP method with the GPC method is introduced. The results show that the proposed subjective comprehensive evaluation method can accurately provide the ranks of the sound stimuli over all subjective perception with a significant decrease of the evaluation workload.     

The Effects of a Programed Textbook on Achievement Under Three Techniques of Instruction

The experiment examined the relationship among several variables affecting extra-dimensional (ED) shift performance. Children and adults were trained to one of three criteria and given one of two ED shifts. All tasks required S to choose one of two colored geometric forms projected on a screen. The results are: (a) older Ss made fewer errors in training and transfer than younger Ss; (b) overtraining did not facilitate the ED shift wherein stimuli remained the same from training to transfer for the adults, but it did for the 7- and 8-year-old children; (c) overtraining inhibited the performance of the 5- and 6-year-old Ss given this ED shift; (d) overtraining neither facilitated nor inhibited the ED shift wherein stimuli changed from training to transfer. An interpretation was given in terms of verbal labeling, discrimination of change, perservative errors, and task difficulty.     

Measuring the “transfer of meaning” through members of equivalence classes merged via a class-specific reinforcement procedure

Seven participants received conditional discrimination training that established the 12 conditional relations A1B1, A2B2, A3B3, A1C1, A2C2, A3C3, D1E1, D2E2, D3E3, D1F1, D2F2, and D3F3. The A stimuli were pictures of faces portraying emotional expressions; the others were arbitrary forms. Correct responses resulted in presentations of class-specific reinforcers, Sr1, Sr2, and Sr3. After training, tests confirmed the formation of ABC and DEF equivalence classes. Further tests then documented the merger of the classes and the emergence of SrB, SrC, SrE, and SrF relations, showing that the class-specific reinforcers were equivalence class members. Finally, participants did Semantic Differential ratings that tested whether the emotional valence of the A stimuli transferred to the arbitrary forms, B and E. The results show that participants’ evaluations of the B and E stimuli were similar to evaluations of the A stimuli made by participants of a control group. This finding is considered as a demonstration that class-specific outcomes can mediate class merger phenomena and the transfer of functions through members of merged classes.     

Evaluative Conditioning and the Development of Attitudes in Early Childhood

Many attitudes are acquired in early childhood. However, due to a lack of experimental research, little is known about the processes of how they are acquired. Two experiments were therefore conducted with 153 German kindergarten children aged 3–6 years that provide first evidence for childhood attitude formation in terms of evaluative conditioning. Specifically, it was found that children preferred novel stimuli previously paired with liked stimuli over novel stimuli previously paired with disliked stimuli. This effect occurred independently of age, generalized toward similar novel stimuli, and did not depend on children's recollection of how stimuli were paired. The findings are discussed in terms of the processes underlying childhood attitude formation, and implications for related research areas are highlighted.     

The role of response-reinforcer associations increases throughout extended instrumental training

Two experiments examined the effects of extended training on the development of response-reinforcer associations. Rats were trained by using various food reinforcers to make multiple instrumental responses. Subsequently, those reinforcers were devalued by being paired with a toxin. The presence of response-reinforcer associations was inferred from the decrease in the likelihood of a response following devaluation of its reinforcer. Such response-reinforcer associations are known to contribute to performance after moderate amounts of training. These experiments addressed the question of whether the contribution of those associations remains constant, increases, or decreases with more extended training. Experiment 1 found that even after a response had been extensively trained with one reinforcer, the substitution of a new reinforcer produced new associations between the response and that new reinforcer. After extended training, a response continued to acquire new associations with a reinforcer, as indexed by the impact of a devaluation procedure. Experiment 2 directly compared the contribution of reinforcers used extensively and moderately with the same response. It found that devaluation of the extensively used reinforcer more effectively reduced performance of the response, suggesting that the associations formed with additional training contribute to performance of the response. These experiments indicate that the contribution of response-reinforcer associations does not decrease but, instead, continues to grow throughout the course of extended instrumental training.     

Remembering: The role of extraneous reinforcement

In two experiments, pigeons' responding on an extraneous task was explicitly reinforced during delayed matching-to-sample trials. In Experiment 1, red or green sample stimuli were followed by retention intervals of 0.2, 1, 4, or 12 sec, during which pecks to a white center key were reinforced with 2.5-sec access to wheat according to extinction, variable-interval 30-sec, and variable-interval 15-sec schedules in different conditions. A proportion of .2, .5, .7, or .9 of subsequent red or green choice responses that matched the sample were reinforced with 3-sec access to wheat. The result was that increasing center key reinforcement, or reducing reinforcer probability, lowered overall accuracy. Initial discriminability fell, but with no change in the rate of forgetting. In Experiment 2, initial discriminability was affected by extraneous reinforcers that were contingent on center key pecking, but not by noncontingent reinforcers. A plausible conclusion is that initial discriminability decreases when reinforcers strengthen competing behaviors.     

Responses of Mentally Retarded Children on a Visual Discrimination Task Involving Concept Formation

This study evaluated 3 groups of mentally retarded children on a visual discrimination reading readiness task. Ss included 75 mentally retarded persons residing at the Columbus State Institute divided into 5 MA groups ranging from 3 years to 8 years. Three different groups of 25 Ss were matched on CA, MA, and IQ and two of these were paired on perceptual functioning on the basis of Gellner classifications. The third group included 25 Ss diagnosed as having genetic mechanisms. The task consisted of 100 cards of three coloured pictures with two of them being associated. Results showed the minimally handicapped visual group performed higher than the other two groups. MA was highly related to success especially for the highest MA group. Implications of these data are discussed.     

Conducting Preference Assessments and Reinforcer Testing for Individuals With Profound Multiple Disabilities: Issues and Procedures

The purpose of this article is to review the current research on preference assessment and reinforcer testing for individuals with profound multiple disabilities (PMD). It briefly reviews the literature that describes a subpopulation of individuals with PMD distinct from the general population of individuals labeled as having profound disabilities. The article describes the types of preference assessment procedures that have been used with individuals with PMD. Results from 13 published studies, which assessed preferences and tested reinforcers with individuals with PMD, suggest that preference procedures currently used with individuals at the higher levels of profound disabilities and individuals with severe disabilities are not always successful in identifying preferred stimuli that function as consistent reinforcers for individuals with PMD. Based on this review and other studies over a 3-year period, this article provides a rationale for conducting preference assessments to assist in curriculum development and describes a process for conducting preference assessments and targeting social, affective, and motor behaviors to increase with individuals with PMD.