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EFFECTS OF REINFORCER QUALITY ON BEHAVIORAL MOMENTUM: COORDINATED APPLIED AND BASIC RESEARCH
Author(s) -
Mace F. Charles,
Mauro Benjamin C.,
Boyajian Amy E.,
Eckert Tanya L.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1901/jaba.1997.30-1
Subject(s) - reinforcement , psychology , extinction (optical mineralogy) , quality (philosophy) , developmental psychology , audiology , social psychology , medicine , chemistry , philosophy , epistemology , mineralogy
The high‐probability (high‐ p ) instructional sequence has been an effective treatment for noncompliance. However, treatment failures have also been reported. We hypothesized that the efficacy of the high‐ p treatment may be improved by using higher quality reinforcers for compliance to high‐ p instructions. The resistance of compliance to change was tested by varying reinforcer quality in two applied studies and a basic laboratory experiment. Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that an increase in reinforcer quality for high‐ p compliance will increase the effectiveness of the high‐ p treatment when it fails to increase compliance. Experiment 2 assessed the effects of reinforcer quality on resistance of compliance to change by presenting successive low‐ p requests following the high‐ p treatment. A basic laboratory study (Experiment 3) was conducted to further isolate the relation between reinforcer quality and behavioral momentum. Two different liquid reinforcers (sucrose and citric acid solutions) were presented in a two‐component multiple variable‐interval variable‐interval schedule followed by a single extinction test session. Results of all three experiments showed a generally consistent relationship between reinforcer quality and behavioral momentum.