When discrete localizable stimuli are used during appetitive Pavlovian conditioning, "sign-tracking" and "goal-tracking" responses emerge. Sign-tracking is observed when conditioned responding is directed toward the CS, whereas goal-tracking manifests as responding directed to the site of expected reward delivery. These…

It has often been suggested that nonexperts find the communication of behavior analysts to be viscerally off-putting. We argue that this concern should be the focus of systematic research rather than mere discussion, and describe five studies that illustrate how publicly available lists of word-emotion ratings can be used to estimate the responses…

Among many of Jack Michael's contributions to the field of behavior analysis is his behavioral account of motivation. This paper focuses on the concept of "motivating operation" (MO) by outlining its development from Skinner's (1938) notion of "drive." Conceptually, Michael's term helped us change our focus on…

Serving as Rachlin's teaching assistant for his graduate course on animal learning in 1973 determined the direction of the author's career, which has been to build computer models and robots based mostly on the equations from that course and related ones. These artificial beings behave and learn very much like animals, and creating them forces a…

We evaluated the discrimination acquisition of individuals with developmental disabilities under immediate and delayed reinforcement. In Experiment 1, discrimination between two alternatives was examined when reinforcement was immediate or delayed by 20 s, 30 s, or 40 s. In Experiment 2, discrimination between 2 alternatives was compared across an…

Historically, researchers have never quite been able to agree as to the role of emotions, if any, when behavior is selected by its consequences. A brief review of findings from several fields suggests that in contingency-shaped behavior, motivating events, often unconscious, seem needed for reinforcement to select behavior. In rule-governed…

Subjects completed a baseline stimulus matching procedure designed to produce two symmetrical stimulus relations; A1-B1 and A2-B2. Using A1, B1, and two novel stimuli, subjects were then trained to produce a common key-press response for two stimuli and a second key-press response for two further stimuli across two blocks of response training.…

Reinforcing an alternative response in the same context as a target response reduces the rate of occurrence but increases the persistence of that target response. Applied researchers who use such techniques to decrease the rate of a target problem behavior risk inadvertently increasing the persistence of the same problem behavior. Behavioral…

Clinical behavior analysis often targets the shaping of clients' functional interpretations of/or rules about his own behavior. These are referred to as clinically relevant behavior 3 (CRB3) in functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP). We suggest that CRB3s should be seen as contingency-specifying stimuli (CSS), due to the their ability to change…

Five individuals with autism or other developmental disabilities participated in paired-stimulus preference assessments during repeated baseline probes. All subjects initially showed a pronounced bias by typically selecting the stimulus placed in either the left or right position. Biased responding for 3 subjects was eliminated when training…

Previous research has shown that rats can learn matching-to-sample relations with olfactory stimuli; however, the specific characteristics of this relational control are unclear. In Experiment 1, 6 rats were trained to either match or nonmatch to sample in a modified operant chamber using common household spices as olfactory stimuli. After…

The delivery of food contingent on 10 s of consecutive toy engagement resulted in a decrease in engagement and a corresponding increase in other responses that had been previously reinforced with food. Similar effects were not observed when tokens exchangeable for the same food were delivered, suggesting that engagement was disrupted by the…

Training context can influence resistance to disruption under differing reinforcement schedules. With nonhumans, when relatively lean and rich reinforcement schedules are experienced in the context of a multiple schedule, greater resistance is found in the rich than the lean component, as described by behavioral momentum theory. By contrast, when…

The effects of reinforcer magnitude and response requirement on pigeons' say choices in an experimental homologue of human say-do correspondence were assessed in two experiments. The procedure was similar to a conditional discrimination procedure except the pigeons chose both a sample stimulus (the say component) and a comparison stimulus that…

Stimuli associated with primary reinforcers appear themselves to acquire the capacity to strengthen behavior. This paper reviews research on the strengthening effects of conditioned reinforcers within the context of contemporary quantitative choice theories and behavioral momentum theory. Based partially on the finding that variations in…