Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
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Despite the success of exposure-based psychotherapies in anxiety treatment, relapse remains problematic. Resurgence, the return of previously eliminated behavior following the elimination of an alternative source of reinforcement, is a promising model of operant relapse. Nonhuman resurgence research has shown that higher rates of alternative reinforcement result in faster, more comprehensive suppression of target behavior, but also in greater resurgence when alternative reinforcement is eliminated. ⋯ Target responding resurged in the Rich and Lean groups, but not in the Control group. Between groups, resurgence was more pronounced in the Rich group than the Lean and Control groups. Clinical implications of these findings, including care on the part of clinicians when identifying alternative sources of reinforcement, are discussed.
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We investigated why violations to the constant-ratio rule, an assumption of the generalized matching law, occur in procedures that arrange frequent changes to reinforcer ratios. Our investigation produced steady-state data and compared them with data from equivalent, frequently changing procedures. Six pigeons responded in a four-alternative concurrent-schedule experiment with an arranged reinforcer-rate ratio of 27:9:3:1. ⋯ Additionally, local analyses showed that preference after reinforcement was towards the alternative that was likely to produce the next reinforcer, instead of being towards the just-reinforced alternative as in frequently changing procedures. This suggests that the effect of a reinforcer on preference is fundamentally different in rapidly changing and steady-state environments. Comparing this finding to the existing literature suggests that choice is more influenced by reinforcer-generated signals when the reinforcement contingencies often change.
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When the availability of reinforcers depends on time since an event, time functions as a discriminative stimulus. Behavioral control by elapsed time is generally weak, but may be enhanced by added stimuli that act as additional time markers. The present paper assessed the effect of brief and continuous added stimuli on control by time-based changes in the reinforcer differential, using a procedure in which the local reinforcer ratio reversed at a fixed time after the most recent reinforcer delivery. ⋯ The effect of the brief stimulus presentations on choice decreased as a function of time since the most recent stimulus change. We compared the ability of several versions of a model of local choice to describe these data. The data were best described by a model which assumed that error in discriminating the local reinforcer ratio arose from imprecise discrimination of reinforcers in both time and space, suggesting that timing behavior is controlled not only by discrimination elapsed time, but by discrimination of the reinforcer differential in time.
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Resurgence is the relapse of a previously reinforced and then extinguished target response when extinguishing a more recently reinforced alternative response. We designed the present study to assess the contribution of stimulus-control and reinforcer-control processes in determining resurgence. In a modified resurgence procedure, we removed the alternative discriminative stimulus signaling alternative reinforcement when extinguishing the alternative response. ⋯ Therefore, the more abrupt resurgence with the modified procedure than with the typical procedure suggests removing the alternative stimulus reduced the competition between alternative and target responding. These findings revealed the importance of adding and removing alternative reinforcement in producing resurgence (reinforcer control) but little influence of simply adding and removing the alternative stimulus (stimulus control). These data suggest that clinicians should consider the long-term availability of the alternative response option when developing differential-reinforcement interventions.
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The current experiment examined the degree to which locally varying food probabilities on two keys across time since food presentations can continue to control choice until the next food delivery. In two sets of conditions, the probability of food delivery being made available on one key relative to the other key varied sinusoidally across a 1-min period following each food delivery. In Set 1, food-probability changes were unsignaled and the number of cycles per min was varied across conditions. ⋯ The onset of stimulus changes in Set 2 led to a transient reinstatement of local control by food probabilities regardless of the portion of the sinusoidal variation in food probabilities signaled by the stimuli. However, in conditions where the same colored stimuli signaled different portions of the sinusoidal variation in food-delivery probabilities, stimulus changes attenuated joint control by elapsed time and food-probability values. These results suggest that, changing relative food probabilities and stimuli can direct preference toward the likely location of the next food delivery across time since a food presentation, although the degree to which control over choice will be maintained across elapsed time depends on how experimenter-arranged contingencies are mapped onto elapsed time.