Premium
SELF‐INHIBITING EFFECTS OF REINFORCEMENT 1
Author(s) -
Catania A. Charles
Publication year - 1973
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 - 10.1901/jeab.1973.19-517
Subject(s) - reinforcement , psychology , function (biology) , class (philosophy) , inhibitory control , inhibitory postsynaptic potential , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , social psychology , neuroscience , computer science , artificial intelligence , cognition , biology , evolutionary biology
The reinforcers produced by one response reduce the rate of other, concurrently reinforced responses. An analysis of the logical and empirical implications of the relation indicates that one reinforcer must have this effect on responses maintained by other reinforcers even when all reinforcers are produced by the same class of responses. A quantitative expression of the relation leads to a formulation, mathematically equivalent to Herrnstein's (1970), in which the rate of a reinforced response is a joint function of (1) an excitatory effect of the reinforcers produced by that class of responses, and (2) an inhibitory effect of the total reinforcers produced both by that class and by other classes of responses.