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CONCURRENT SCHEDULES OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT: DIFFERENTIAL‐IMPACT AND DIFFERENTIAL‐OUTCOMES HYPOTHESES
Author(s) -
Magoon Michael A.,
Critchfield Thomas S.
Publication year - 2008
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.2008.90-1
Subject(s) - reinforcement , psychology , differential reinforcement , operant conditioning , matching law , differential (mechanical device) , contingency , social psychology , outcome (game theory) , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , mathematics , engineering , aerospace engineering , linguistics , philosophy , mathematical economics
Considerable evidence from outside of operant psychology suggests that aversive events exert greater influence over behavior than equal‐sized positive‐reinforcement events. Operant theory is largely moot on this point, and most operant research is uninformative because of a scaling problem that prevents aversive events and those based on positive reinforcement from being directly compared. In the present investigation, humans mouse‐click responses were maintained on similarly structured, concurrent schedules of positive (money gain) and negative (avoidance of money loss) reinforcement. Because gains and losses were of equal magnitude, according to the analytical conventions of the generalized matching law, bias (log b ? 0) would indicate differential impact by one type of consequence; however, no systematic bias was observed. Further research is needed to reconcile this outcome with apparently robust findings in other literatures of superior behavior control by aversive events. In an incidental finding, the linear function relating log behavior ratio and log reinforcement ratio was steeper for concurrent negative and positive reinforcement than for control conditions involving concurrent positive reinforcement. This may represent the first empirical confirmation of a free‐operant differential‐outcomes effect predicted by contingency‐discriminability theories of choice.