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A PARAMETRIC VARIATION OF DELAYED REINFORCEMENT IN INFANTS
Author(s) -
Reeve Lori,
Reeve Kenneth F.,
Poulson Claire L.
Publication year - 1993
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.1993.60-515
Subject(s) - reinforcement , psychology , audiology , differential reinforcement , conditioning , developmental psychology , statistics , social psychology , medicine , mathematics
This study is an exploration of the parameters of delayed reinforcement with 6 infants (2 to 6 months old) in two experiments using single‐subject repeated‐reversal designs. In Experiment 1, unsignaled 3‐s delayed reinforcement was used to increase infant vocalization rate when compared to a differential‐reinforcement‐of‐other‐than‐vocalization condition and a yoked, no‐contingency comparison condition. In Experiment 2, unsignaled 5‐s delayed reinforcement was used to increase infant vocalization rate when compared to an alternating‐treatments comparison condition. The alternating‐treatments comparison consisted of 3‐min components of differential reinforcement of other behavior and 3‐min components of a nontreatment baseline. Successful conditioning was obtained in both experiments. These results contrast with those of previous infancy researchers who did not obtain conditioning with delays of 3 s and who attributed their findings to the limitations of the infant's memory capacity. We present an alternative conceptual framework and methodology for the analysis of delayed reinforcement in infants.