The residual deprivation effect in instrumental conditioning as a function of deprivation level at the time of exposure to the reinforcer

The effect of food deprivation level at the time of initial exposure to a subsequent food reinforcer was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, deprivation at the time of initial exposure influenced the subsequent acquisition and extinction of an instrumental response. In Experiment 2, the residual deprivation effect associated with a reduction in deprivation level occurred only when rats initially experienced the reinforcer at a high, as compared with a low, deprivation level. Results were discussed in terms of the assumption that the limits of incentive generated by a reinforcer are influenced by the deprivation state at the time of first exposure to that reinforcer.     

Response deprivation and response satiation as determinants of instrumental performance: Some data and theory

Sixteen human subjects were presented with an instrumental task in which pressing a button to produce a visual stimulus was followed by an auditory stimulus. Half of the subjects were assigned to a condition under which pressing the button at the subject’s operant level produced less of the auditory stimulus than the subject would normally choose to receive. For the others, pressing the button at operant level produced more of the auditory stimulus than the subject would choose. Subjects in the former condition showed increases in instrumental performance; those in the latter showed decreases. The results indicated that the rewarding or punishing effects of an event depend upon the relation of the instrumental contingency to the subject’s unconstrained behavior.     

Resurgence of instrumental behavior after an abstinence contingency

In resurgence, an extinguished instrumental behavior (R1) recovers when a behavior that has replaced it (R2) is also extinguished. The phenomenon may be relevant to understanding relapse that can occur after the termination of “contingency management” treatments, in which an unwanted behavior (e.g., substance abuse) is reduced by reinforcing an alternative behavior. When reinforcement is discontinued, the unwanted behavior might resurge. However, unlike most resurgence experiments, contingency management treatments also introduce a negative contingency, in which reinforcers are not delivered unless the client has abstained from the unwanted behavior. In two experiments with rats, we therefore examined the effects of adding a negative “abstinence” contingency to the resurgence design. During response elimination, R2 was not reinforced unless R1 had not been emitted for a minimum period of time (45, 90, or 135 s). In both experiments, adding such a contingency to simple R1 extinction reduced, but did not eliminate, resurgence. In Experiment 2, we found the same effect in a yoked group that could earn reinforcers for R2 at the same points in time as the negative-contingency group, but without the requirement to abstain from R1. Thus, the negative contingency per se did not contribute to the reduction in resurgence. These results suggest that the contingency reduced resurgence by making reinforcers more difficult to earn and more widely spaced in time. This could have allowed the animal to learn that R1 was extinguished in the “context” of infrequent reinforcement—a context more like that of resurgence testing. The results are thus consistent with a contextual (renewal) account of resurgence. The method might provide a better model of relapse after termination of a contingency management treatment.     

Bidimensional sorting in preschoolers with an instrumental learning task

74 lower- and middle-class children aged 2 1/2, 3 1/2, and 4 1/2 years who were successful at unidimensional sorting of 2 objects by either color or form were given feedback for correct bidimensional sorting of 3 objects, 2 of which had been used in unidimensional testing. Four of the 10 2 1/2-year-olds and 58 of the 64 3 1/2- and 4 1/2-year-olds reached criterion on the bidimensional sorting task. Neither social class nor performance on a verbal comprehension test (the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test) was significantly correlated with success on either unidimensional or bidimensional sorting, although social class and test scores were significantly correlated. The results indicate that Piagetian centration (i.e., the inability to transcend unidimensional attention) is a task- or situation-specific phenomenon, and biodimensional responding is the rule rather than the exception for 3 1/2- and 4 1/2-year-olds in an instrumental situation involving a limited number of stimuli.     

Transfer of a taste aversion from food to water under various states of deprivation

The importance of ingestive contexts (feeding and drinking) and deprivation states to rats’ transfer of a taste aversion were examined, In Experiments 1 and 2, rats were trained with novel saccharin-treated foods while either food deprived or food and water deprived, They were then tested with a 1,0% saccharin solution while either water deprived or food and water deprived, Comparable aversions to the solution were displayed regardless of deprivation states, Two further experiments examined transfer to a .1% saccharin solution in conjunction with deprivation state change, When both stimulus properties and deprivation were widely discrepant from training to test, reduced transfer was noted. The results suggest that stimulus similarity was a stronger controlling variable than deprivation state similarity in facilitating the transfer of an aversion from a feeding context to a drinking context, The results were viewed as being consistent with the known parameters affecting generalization gradients.     

Differential effects of delay of reinforcement on acquisition of affective and instrumental responses

Thirsty rats were allowed to choose between a striped arm of a T-maze that contained water and a black arm that contained a saccharin solution. After each exposure to the saccharin solution, half of the animals received a lithium chloride injection 1 min later and half received the same injection 30 min later. Comparable saline injections at these same delays were given after each exposure to the striped, water, arm. The results from saccharin aversion, spatial aversion, and instrumental learning tests generally supported the hypothesis that delayed reinforcement has a substantially greater negative impact on the acquisition of an instrumental response than it has on affective conditioning.     

Removing but not adding elements of a context affects generalization of instrumental responses

Three experiments with rats investigated whether adding or removing elements of a context affects generalization of instrumental behavior. Each of the experiments used a free operant procedure. In Experiments 1 and 2, rats were trained to press a lever for food in a distinctive context. Then, transfer of lever pressing was tested in a context created either by adding an element to the context of initial acquisition or by removing one of the acquisition context’s elements. In Experiment 3, a similar generalization test was conducted after rats received acquisition and extinction within the same context. For Experiments 1 and 2, we observed that removing elements from the acquisition context disrupted acquisition performance, whereas the addition of elements to the context did not. Experiment 3 revealed that removing elements from but not adding elements to the original context improved extinction performance. Our results are consistent with an elemental view of context representation.     

Renewal of extinguished instrumental responses: independence from Pavlovian processes and dependence on outcome value

The source of renewal of instrumental responding in rats was investigated. In Experiment 1, two responses (R1 and R2) were reinforced with one outcome (O1) in contexts A and B (i.e., R1→O1, R2→O1), and then R2 was extinguished in A and R1 was extinguished in B. At test, the rate of R1 was higher than that of R2 in context A, and the reverse was the case in context B: Renewed responding was independent of the Pavlovian context→O1 associations. In Experiment 2, all rats received R1→O1 and R2→O2 trials in A and then were placed in B, where they were sated on O2 and either did (Group Extinction) or did not (Group No Extinction) receive concurrent extinction of R1 and R2. At test, we found more responding in A than in B for Group Extinction, but not for Group No Extinction, and the renewed responding in A was as sensitive to the current value of the outcome as responding that had not been subject to extinction (i.e., the rate was higher for R1 than for R2). That is, the renewed responding was goal-directed. These results identify the removal of contextual inhibion of either the response or the response→outcome associaon as potenal bases for renewal, and the response→outcome associaon as the source of renewed responding.     

Variations in radial maze performance under different levels of food and water deprivation

Four groups of rats were tested on an eight-arm radial maze under a free-choice procedure. The subjects were maintained at either 80% or 100% of their preexperimental free-feeding weights through restricted access to either food or water. Water-deprived subjects received water in the maze; food-deprived subjects received food. Water-deprived subjects learned the task faster than food-deprived subjects. The four groups developed different response patterns. These were measured by themean transition size, the average angular distance (in 45° units) between consecutively chosen arms. Rats foraging for food and water developed different search strategies, with water-deprived subjects exhibiting lower mean transition sizes. When the subjects were given three consecutive trials, 2 min apart, choice accuracy declined across trials, although performance on the last two trials improved across days. The groups’ mean transition sizes remained different, and were constant over trials and days. Thus, the test procedures differentially affected choice accuracy and response patterning.     

Intrinsic reinforcing properties of putatively neutral stimuli in an instrumental two-lever discrimination task

Four experiments examined the influence of a stimulus presented after one response in a two-lever choice task. In Experiment 1, food-deprived rats trained on a concurrent variable-interval extinction schedule responded more often on the extinction lever when such responding periodically produced a visual stimulus than when it did not. In Experiments 2 and 3, a similar signal-induced enhancement effect was found even when food was delivered randomly with respect to responding on both levers or when no food was presented. In Experiment 4, a response-contingent visual stimulus elevated responding to the lever on which it was presented, but an auditory cue suppressed responding. These findings indicate that visual stimuli may possess intrinsically reinforcing properties for rats.     

Utilization and dominance of spatially separated cues as a function of water deprivation

Utilization and dominance of physically separate redundant-relevant cues were measured in albino rats under moderate (18 h/day) or high (23.5 h/day) water deprivation. Cues were located on goal doors (brightness) and the floor (texture) in a two-choice discrimination apparatus. Three experiments were carried out with the following paradigms: incidental cue, redundant-relevant cue discrimination, and optional shift discrimination. Deprivation did not affect rate of acquisition of initial discrimination or cue dominance. Cue utilization, however, was inversely related to deprivation in redundant-relevant cue and optional shift discrimination tasks. These effects were limited, however. Over-training on the redundant-relevant cue task eliminated the effect. Within the optional shift situation, only animals that initially acquired a texture cue discrimination were affected by deprivation. Other factors affecting cue utilization in these experiments were also described and discussed.     

从彼此颉颃抗衡到相互借鉴发展——对工具论与本质论的评价及二者对中国美术教育发展的现实意义

自上世纪以来,艺术教育的冲突一直表现为工具论和本质论两大派别之间的冲突。工具论强调美术教育的教育价值,通过美术创作促进儿童健全发展;重视创作过程,忽视创作效果;主张顺应儿童自然本性发展。本质论强调科目中心,主张以严谨的美术课程,实现美术的自身价值,美术能力不是自然发展的结果,而是学习和教育的结果。在新时期,本质论与工具论的互相通融借鉴会更好地促进美术教育的良性发展。     

Rats’ responses to a moving object related to food or water: A behavior-systems analysis

The present experiments compared rats’ responses to a moving object (a rolling ball bearing) related to either food or water under both Pavlovian and operant contingencies. In Experiment 1, food-restricted rats contacted food-related bearings more frequently and with more complex response patterns than water-restricted rats contacted water-related bearings. Food-related contacts occurred with shorter latency, longer average duration, and increased likelihood of dig, carry, and chew. Experiment 2 revealed that once contact with the bearing had been established, its form persisted despite changes in the type of reward and restriction. In Experiment 3, rats that were simultaneously food and water restricted learned to discriminate between painted and unpainted bearings related to food versus no food, water versus no water, and food versus water. Again, food-related bearings produced more complex, although not more frequent, interactions than did water-related bearings. In none of the experiments did rats lick the ball bearing related to water. The results supported a behavior-system approach, but not the stimulus-substitution or arbitrary-operant accounts of conditioned-response topography.     

Within-event learning contributes to value transfer in simultaneous instrumental discriminations by pigeons

Following simultaneous discrimination training with pigeons, in which responding to the S−was reinforced on half of the trials and responding to the S− was never reinforced, we examined the effect on the S− of presenting the S− by itself and the effect on the S+ of presenting the S− by itself (relative to an S− or an S− for which there had been no single-stimulus presentations). For Group A−, responding to the S− presented by itself was always reinforced, whereas for Group A−, such responding was extinguished. For Group B−, responding to the S− presented by itself was always reinforced, whereas for Group B+, responding was extinguished. Although both Group A+ and Group A−tended to avoid their associated S− (relative to a control S−), Group A+ avoided its associated S− less than did Group A−. In contrast, although for Group B−, presentation of the S− alone increased the pigeons’ preference for its associated S−(relative to a control S+), for Group B−, presentation of the S−alone had little effect on its preference for its associated S+. These results suggest that presentation of one stimulus from a simultaneous discrimination has two independent and sometimes opposite effects on the other discriminative stimulus. First, it reduces the strength of within-event conditioning between the S+ and the S−, and second, if the value of the singly presented stimulus has increased, some of its newly acquired value will transfer retroactively to the stimulus with which it was originally paired.     

Children's Sensitivity to Lack of Understanding

Successful tutoring depends in part on child tutors’ ability to recognise and interpret accurately signals of misunderstanding by their tutees. Age- and gender-related differences were investigated in a study which exposed 80 children to a video-recorded episode involving a target child receiving ambiguous instructions in her attempts to move a model car along a designated route on a playmat roadway from one destination to another. The results showed that explicit, general and facial modes of displaying puzzlement by the target child were judged as equally powerful expressions of degree of puzzlement, but 8-10 year olds judged the target child as significantly more puzzled than did 7 year olds. Older children were also more likely to attribute the puzzlement of the target child to the ambiguous instructions than to her verbal or facial expression of puzzlement. Girls were generally more accurate than boys in judging facial expressions and less likely than boys to give wrong or alternatively ambiguous responses when given the opportunity to correct the video-recorded ambiguous instructions. The results throw some light on the developing sensitivities of boys and girls in recognising and attributing failures of understanding by other children.     

Oxygen deprivation as a drive state in an aquatic insect: Family Dytiscidae

Thirty aquatic diving beetles,Rhantus atncolor, of the family Dytiscidae, were subjected to 1-, 5-, 10-, 15-, 20-, and 25-min levels of oxygen deprivation. The level of deprivation was procured by submerging the Ss under water for the allotted period of time. A control group receiving no oxygen deprivation was also tested. The results clearly established oxygen deprivation as a drive state capable of increasing the general level of activity in aquatic Coleoptera as measured by swimming speed in the runway. Significant differences were also found between these deprivation levels.     

Sensitivity Training as an Integral Phase of Counselor Education

A four-day T-Group was conducted conjointly with counselor education staff members and practicum students. At the end of the T-Group significant gains were made on the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory, a measure of Rogers' conditions of a helping relationship. Three months later clients of the group members rated them on the same measure. A number of significant correlations were found. A follow-up questionnaire anecdotally supported the findings.