Rethinking reinforcement: Allocation, induction, and contingency.
TLDR
The term induction covers phenomena such as adjunctive, interim, and terminal behavior-behavior induced in a situation by occurrence of food or another Phylogenetically Important Event (PIE) in that situation.Abstract:
The concept of reinforcement is at least incomplete and almost certainly incorrect. An alternative way of organizing our understanding of behavior may be built around three concepts: allocation, induction, and correlation. Allocation is the measure of behavior and captures the centrality of choice: All behavior entails choice and consists of choice. Allocation changes as a result of induction and correlation. The term induction covers phenomena such as adjunctive, interim, and terminal behavior—behavior induced in a situation by occurrence of food or another Phylogenetically Important Event (PIE) in that situation. Induction resembles stimulus control in that no one-to-one relation exists between induced behavior and the inducing event. If one allowed that some stimulus control were the result of phylogeny, then induction and stimulus control would be identical, and a PIE would resemble a discriminative stimulus. Much evidence supports the idea that a PIE induces all PIE-related activities. Research also supports the idea that stimuli correlated with PIEs become PIE-related conditional inducers. Contingencies create correlations between “operant” activity (e.g., lever pressing) and PIEs (e.g., food). Once an activity has become PIE-related, the PIE induces it along with other PIE-related activities. Contingencies also constrain possible performances. These constraints specify feedback functions, which explain phenomena such as the higher response rates on ratio schedules in comparison with interval schedules. Allocations that include a lot of operant activity are “selected” only in the sense that they generate more frequent occurrence of the PIE within the constraints of the situation; contingency and induction do the “selecting.”read more
Citations
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Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation: A sketch of the evidence.
Peter J. Richerson,Ryan Baldini,Adrian Bell,Kathryn Demps,Karl Frost,Vicken Hillis,Sarah Mathew,Emily K. Newton,Nicole Naar,Lesley Newson,Cody T. Ross,Paul E. Smaldino,Timothy M. Waring,Matthew R. Zefferman +13 more
TL;DR: This target article sketches the evidence from five domains that bear on the explanatory adequacy of cultural group selection and competing hypotheses to explain human cooperation and presents evidence, including quantitative evidence, that the answer to all of the questions is “yes” and argues that it is not clear that any extant alternative tocultural group selection can be a complete explanation.
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Behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms of pavlovian and instrumental extinction learning.
TL;DR: A review of the behavioral neuroscience of extinction can be found in this article, where a behavior that has been acquired through Pavlovian or instrumental learning decreases in strength when the outcome that reinforced it is removed.
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Renewed behavior produced by context change and its implications for treatment maintenance: A review.
TL;DR: The present review suggests basic and translational research on renewal provides an empirical literature to bring greater conceptual systematization to understanding generalization and maintenance of behavioral treatment.
Journal ArticleDOI
On defining resurgence.
Kennon A. Lattal,Carlos R. X. Cançado,James E. Cook,Stephanie L. Kincaid,Tyler D. Nighbor,Anthony C. Oliver +5 more
TL;DR: A review of different investigators' definitions of resurgence revealed none of the reviewed definitions sufficiently reflect important variables in the generation and assessment of resurgence, so a proposed working definition is proposed that takes into account contemporary research involving all of the aforementioned factors.
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Coal Is Not Black, Snow Is Not White, Food Is Not a Reinforcer: The Roles of Affordances and Dispositions in the Analysis of Behavior.
TL;DR: An expansion of the three-term contingency is suggested in order to help keep us mindful of the importance of behavioral systems, states, emotions, and dispositions in the authors' research programs.
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