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VARIETIES OF CONTRAST: A REVIEW OF INCENTIVE RELATIVITY BY CHARLES F. FLAHERTY
Author(s) -
Williams Ben A.
Publication year - 1997
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.1997.68-133
Subject(s) - contrast (vision) , context (archaeology) , incentive , value (mathematics) , interpretation (philosophy) , psychology , contrast effect , phenomenon , cognitive psychology , social psychology , epistemology , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , philosophy , linguistics , economics , statistics , history , microeconomics , archaeology
The phenomenon of contrast has been studied from two quite separate perspectives, one derived from the classic studies of incentive contrast such as Crespi (1942) and the other from the study of behavioral contrast within behavior analysis. This book reviews both of these types of contrast effects and finds both differences and similarities between them. Still at issue is the validity of the interpretation of contrast that assumes that the value of some target level of reward is modified in inverse relation to the level of reward from other sources in the same context. This concept works well for the classic studies of incentive contrast, but is challenged by the emerging importance of anticipatory contrast and the finding in both of the separate research traditions that anticipatory contrast is inversely related to other measures of reinforcement value.