Members (behaviors) of a response class are equivalent in that they produce the same functional reinforcer. Oftentimes, some members of a response class occur at higher rates than others. This can be problematic when the members that occur at high rates are socially inappropriate (e.g., self-injury, aggression, or disruption). The participant in…

Honeybees are a standard model for the study of appetitive learning and memory. Yet, fewer attempts have been performed to characterize aversive learning and memory in this insect and uncover its molecular underpinnings. Here, we took advantage of the positive phototactic behavior of bees kept away from the hive in a dark environment and…

One experiment with rats explored whether an extinction-cue prevents the recovery of extinguished lever-pressing responses. Initially, rats were trained to perform one instrumental response (R1) for food in Context A, and a different instrumental response (R2) in Context B. Then, responses were extinguished each in the alternate context (R1 in…

We investigated the in vivo role of protein degradation during intermediate (ITM) and long-term memory (LTM) in "Aplysia" using an operant learning paradigm. The proteasome inhibitor MG-132 inhibited the induction and molecular consolidation of LTM with no effect on ITM. Remarkably, maintenance of steady-state protein levels through…

Children with autism often demonstrate less variable behavior than their typically developing peers and those with other cognitive disabilities. A possible reason for lack of response variability emitted by children with autism is that they do not have a variety of response forms in their repertoire. Multiple-exemplar training through the use of…

Individual vocal recognition behaviors in songbirds provide an excellent framework for the investigation of comparative psychological and neurobiological mechanisms that support the perception and cognition of complex acoustic communication signals. To this end, the complex songs of European starlings have been studied extensively. Yet, several…

Background: This study investigated the relative ease of learning across four tasks suggested by an adaptation of Thomas's hierarchy of learning in children with Down syndrome, autism spectrum disorders and mental age-matched controls. Methods: Learning trials were carried out to investigate observational learning, instrumental learning, reversal…

Three experiments with rats examined reacquisition of an operant response after either extinction or a response-elimination procedure that included occasional reinforced responses during extinction. In each experiment, reacquisition was slower when response elimination had included occasional reinforced responses, although the effect was…

Eighty undergraduate students participated in an investigation of the effects on acquisition of immediate versus 30-second delay of reinforcement under either known or unknown response contingency conditions. The students in the four experimental conditions were required to depress three buttons in proper senquence. Following a correct response,…

Patterns of learning by five infants with Down's syndrome (3.5 to 12.5 months old) were studied. The children were visited at home 2 to 3 times per week for periods ranging from 1 to 8 months. Two of the children were reinforced for pulling a string attached around their wrist. Consequences included tape recordings of music or their mother's…

Extinction of operantly conditioned responses, which provides a measure of the ability to adapt to changes in the reinforcement value of stimuli, has been linked to orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in human and non-human animals. This article examines the feasibility of using extinction as a measure of the development of OFC function in preschool-age…

Staddon and Motheral derived a mathematical model of responding in concurrent variable-interval--variable-interval schedules. Their derivation ignores a fundamental aspect of the concurrent schedule contingency. A reinforcer can occur following two consecutive responses on the same schedule or following a switch between the two schedules.…

Learning and memory are central topics in behavioral neuroscience, and inbred mice strains are widely investigated. However, operant conditioning techniques are not as extensively used in this field as they should be, given the effectiveness of the methodology of the experimental analysis of behavior. In the present study, male C57Bl/6 mice,…

Results of numerous human imaging studies and nonhuman neurophysiological studies on "reward" highlight a role for frontal, striatal, and thalamic regions in operant learning. By integrating operant and functional neuroimaging methodologies, the present investigation examined brain activation to two types of discriminative stimuli correlated with…

Stressful life events can have profound effects on our cognitive and motor abilities, from those that could be construed as adaptive to those not so. In this review, I discuss the general notion that acute stressful experience necessarily impairs our abilities to learn and remember. The effects of stress on operant conditioning, that is, learned…