Open AccessOn the efficacy of and preference for signaling extinction in a multiple schedule.
Author(s) -
Alicia J. Odell,
Brian Greer,
Ashley M. Fuhrman,
Alexandra M. Hardee
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
behavioral development bulletin
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1942-0722
DOI - 10.1037/bdb0000104
Subject(s) - reinforcement , psychology , extinction (optical mineralogy) , discriminative model , schedule , stimulus (psychology) , stimulus control , cognitive psychology , preference , neuroscience , social psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , statistics , mathematics , biology , paleontology , nicotine , operating system
Previous basic research has shown that signaling the extinction component of a compound schedule can be aversive and nonpreferred. However, such discriminative stimuli are common when thinning schedules of reinforcement in practice, and they provide several advantages to clinicians. A limitation of previous applied studies on different arrangements of discriminative stimuli is that researchers have used identical stimuli to signal the availability of reinforcement across conditions that do and do not signal extinction, often doubling exposure to the stimulus signaling the availability of reinforcement. The present experiments corrected this limitation by comparing multiple-schedule arrangements that do and do not signal extinction when unique stimuli signal each component across conditions. Results from three participants indicated that both multiple-schedule arrangements were similarly efficacious when teaching the successive discrimination. However, response patterns differed when testing under a concurrent-operants arrangement, suggesting different patterns of preference across various multiple-schedule arrangements.