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Divided stimulus control: Which key did you peck, or what color was it?
Author(s) -
Davison Michael
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1002/jeab.295
Subject(s) - reinforcement , peck (imperial) , stimulus control , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , discriminative model , frequency , schedule , discrimination learning , audiology , statistics , cognitive psychology , social psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , neuroscience , medicine , geometry , nicotine , operating system
Responding on concurrent schedules produced a conditional discrimination (Phases 1 and 2), asking either which peck produced the event, or which color the keys were when the event was produced. In Phases 3 and 4, reinforcer delivery or a delay in blackout was interpolated between responding and the conditional discrimination. In Phase 1, location versus color discrimination accuracy was controlled by the relative reinforcer frequency for correct responses to these questions (divided stimulus control). In Phases 2 to 4, relative reinforcer frequency for correct responses to these questions was .5, and the relative frequency with which concurrent‐schedule responses produced the questions was varied. This variation had no clear effect on the accuracy of reporting Location or Color. These results are consistent with the model of divided control suggested by Davison and Elliffe (2010). Arranging a 3‐s reinforcer between responding and choice decreased both color and location accuracy, but a 3‐s delay only decreased location accuracy. Thus, in concurrent‐schedule performance, both ambient stimuli prior to a reinforcer and the location of the just‐reinforced response are available as discriminative stimuli following the reinforcer. Control of postreinforcer responding is divided between these according to their association with the relative frequency of subsequent reinforcers.