Francis Mechner - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Francis Mechner

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral contingency analysis

Behavioural Processes, Jun 1, 2008

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the a... more This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright

Research paper thumbnail of A Behavioral and Biological Analysis of Aesthetics: Implications for Research and Applications

Psychological Record, Jun 19, 2017

distinguishing attributes of effects one might call "aesthetic," I examined hundreds of examples ... more distinguishing attributes of effects one might call "aesthetic," I examined hundreds of examples in music, visual arts, poetry, literature, humor, performance arts, architecture, science, mathematics, games, and other disciplines. I observed that all involve quasi-emotional reactions to stimuli that are composites of multiple elements that ordinarily do not occur together and whose interaction, when appropriately potentiated, is transformativedifferent in kind from the effects of the separate constituent elements. Such effects, termed synergetic, can evoke surprise-tinged emotional responses. Aesthetic reactions, unlike many other kinds of emotional reactions, are never evoked by biologically urgent action-demanding events, such as threats or opportunities. The examined effects were created by various concept manipulation devices: class expansion, identification of new relations, repetition, symmetry, parsimony, and emotional displays for the audience to mirror (I identified a total of 16 such devices). The effects would occur only for individuals with the necessary priming, in circumstances that include effective potentiating factors. Synergetic stimuli that evoke aesthetic responses tend to be reinforcing, via mechanisms related to their biological utility during our evolution. I offer a theory as to how aesthetics may have evolved from its primordial pre-aesthetic roots, with examples of how consideration of those roots often explains aesthetic and related effects. The article suggests that aesthetic phenomena are a special case of a more pervasive aspect of behavior and proposes research approaches involving laboratory models and fMRI technology.

Research paper thumbnail of A Fixed Interval Schedule in Which the Interval is Initiated by a Response

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Jul 1, 1963

The fixed interval schedule described requires the animal to initiate every time interval by maki... more The fixed interval schedule described requires the animal to initiate every time interval by making a response on a bar other than the one on which it is reinforced. This response, RA, demarcates the postreinforcement pause (SR-RA interval) from the fixed interval pause (RA-RB interval) so that these pauses may be measured separately. Twelve rats and three monkeys, working in two-bar Skinner boxes, were trained and stabilized on this schedule. The resulting performances, presented for,individual animals, are analyzed in terms of (1) the relative frequencies with which the animal waits various lengths of time between consecutive responses, (2) the relative frequencies-with which various rates of responding appear, (3) the change in response rate throughout the fixed interval, (4) the average length of the postreinforcement pause, (5) the relative frequencies with which the animal waits different lengths of time between the RA and the first RB, and (6) the average inter-response time as a function of the rank order in the fixed interval of the inter-response time. The joint interpretation of the several measures taken leads to the following conclusions: 1. The probability of an RB increases throughout the fixed interval. 2. The increase is discontinuous at the first RB, at which point the probability increases sharply. 3. The frequency distributions of RA-RB pauses exhibit three discrete types of behavior with no intermediate cases. 4. The (main) mode of RA-RB interval length usually occurs just below the fixed interval requirement.

Research paper thumbnail of Why Behavior Analysis Needs a Formal Symbolic Language for Codifying Behavioral Contingencies

European journal of behavior analysis, Jun 1, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of A NOTATION SYSTEM FOR THE DESCRIPTION OF BEHAVIORAL PROCEDURES<sup>1</sup>

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Apr 1, 1959

One characteristic shared by all behavior experimentation is that stimuli are presented to a subj... more One characteristic shared by all behavior experimentation is that stimuli are presented to a subject according to pre-designed rules. These rules are variously called conditioning procedures, behavioral procedures, reinforcement contingencies, or reinforcement schedules. While behavioral investigations may differ widely with regard to the rigor of specification as well as the nature of the stimuli they employ (even the term stimulus is far from universal), the rules or conditions that govern the presentation of these stimuli must always in some way be conveyed in reporting the work. The purpose of this paper is to propose a notation for the description of these rules. In published papers they are most frequently described by circumlocution, a method of communication which may require anywhere from several sentences to several pages of text. depending on the author's style and the complexity of the rules concerned. On occasion, authors dissatisfied with the inelegance and verbosity of this mode of description have also devised special notations suitable for their own particular needs. One drawback of such specialized notations has always been, however, that their usefulness tends to be restricted to the applications for which they were designed. The notation system proposed in the present paper represents an attempt to satisfy a wide-enough range of requirements to make it a reasonable first approximation to a generally useful system for describing the essential features of behavioral procedures by means of symbolic diagrams. It is essentially an amalgam of four other notations that are in current use: (1) the one traditionally used in psychological paradigms to describe the succession of stimuli and responses; (2) the flow-chart notation widely used in electronics, computer programming, and systems engineering; (3) the notation of Boolean algebra, which has found its main applications in set theory and logic; and (4) the notation of mathematics. The history of science bears testimony to the fact that the advent of a good notation can have effects beyond merely expediting communication. The symbolic notation of chemistry, for example, served as a catalyst for the development of theory in providing a framework within which existing knowledge could be systematized. It is possible that in behavioral science a successful notation, whether it be the present one or some other, could play an analogous role in the classification of procedures. By presenting a set of intricate interrelations in a concise and schematic form, a diagrammatic or symbolic notation can often lay bare the essential structural features of these interrelations, thereby facilitating their analysis. Thus, a good notation system could implement the discovery of formal parallels between behavioral procedures, and generally suggest schemes for their classification. DEFINITIONS OF SYMBOLS Stimuli, Responses, and Time Intervals The symbols used to designate stimuli, responses, and time intervals are the usual abbreviations S, R, and T, respectively. These symbols and the various modifiers they require 'The author wishes to thank W. N. Schoenfeld and A. G. Snapper for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Research paper thumbnail of Efectos de los aspectos secuenciales de la historia de aprendizaje

Revista Mexicana de analisis de la conducta/Mexican journal of behavior analysis, Mar 22, 2011

In a series of five experiments, a number of similar operant classes, consisting of keystroke seq... more In a series of five experiments, a number of similar operant classes, consisting of keystroke sequences on a computer keyboard, were learned and practiced in succession by human subjects. Each experiment consisted of learning sessions spread over several days, separated by either elapsed time or interpolated sessions in which unrelated but similar operant classes were performed. The learning sessions were followed by a final test session in which the subjects were required to choose and perform one from presented sets of three operant classes. The test was designed to be stressful by the imposition of time pressure and certain other contingencies. In the test session, preference was commonly shown for operant classes from the first-and/or last-learned groups-termed primacy and recency effects respectively-with minimal preference for the middle groups. Most subjects showed either primacy or recency effects, and relatively few showed both; the subjects that showed mainly recency effects also made the largest number of errors during initial learning of the last set of operant classes. In addition, certain noncriterial characteristics of these operants were measured. These revealed other effects, in particular the association of performance errors with both greater resurgence of older behavior patterns and greater numbers of new behavior patterns.

Research paper thumbnail of Effects of Deprivation Upon Counting and Timing in Rats

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Oct 1, 1962

Two procedures were used in an investigation of the effects of deprivation upon counting and timi... more Two procedures were used in an investigation of the effects of deprivation upon counting and timing. Under the first procedure, fixed minimum interval (FMI), the rat received liquid reinforcement every time it pressed bar B after having waited a minimum of 5 sec following a press on bar A. Under the second procedure, fixed consecutive number (FCN), reinforcement was delivered every time the rat pressed bar B following a run of at least four consecutive responses on bar A. Water deprivation was varied over a set of values ranging from 4 to 56 hr. Deprivation had almost no effect on the waiting time in the FMI procedure, or on the number of responses per run in the FCN procedure. With both procedures, increasing deprivation shortened the pause between reinforcement and the next response. In the FCN procedure, the speed with which the runs were exectrted increased with increasing deprivation, although the number of responses in these runs was relatively unaffected.

Research paper thumbnail of PROBABILITY RELATIONS WITHIN RESPONSE SEQUENCES UNDER RATIO REINFORCEMENT<sup>1</sup>

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Apr 1, 1958

Skinner's original description of the effects of fixed-ratio reinforcement schedules in terms of ... more Skinner's original description of the effects of fixed-ratio reinforcement schedules in terms of response-rate measures (14) has served as the point of departure for all such subsequent investigations. The two salient aspects of fixedratio performance that have thus far received the most attention are the high response rates toward the end of the inter-reinforcement period and the characteristic pause after the delivery of a reinforcement (1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 13). Fixed-ratio schedules also have some behavioral effects that are not easily described in terms of response-rate changes. For instance, the internal cohesion of response sequencesmaintainedby ratio reinforcementishigher thanit is for interval reinforcement. The extinction pattern after fixed-ratio reinforcement provides some of the evidence for this property. This pattern is characterized by maximal response rates which are maintained until they give way to an abrupt cessation of responding. If additional responses appear, they appear in bursts, rather than at the intermediate response rates that emerge during extinction after interval reinforcement (14). Further evidence for such cohesion can be seen in Dews' (4) and also in Herrnstein and Morse's (7) pharmacological data, which indicate that be-' havior maintained under ratio schedules is more resistant to disintegration by drug action than is behavior maintained under interval schedules. The concept of "Internal cohesion" of response runs (the term run is used in the sense of sequence) will be defined in terms of the probability that the run will terminate-a definition which is not inconsistent with common usage. Thus, the cohesion of a run would be high when the probability of its termination is low. A systematic investigation of this property of response runs would, therefore, involve a description of runs in terms of their probabilistic structure, i. e., in terms of the probability that the run will terminate at any point. Once a technique is available, the effects of various parameters can be investigated.

Research paper thumbnail of Analyzing variable behavioral contingencies: Are certain complex skills homologous with locomotion?

Behavioural Processes, Jun 1, 2009

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the a... more This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit:

Research paper thumbnail of Anatomy of deception: A behavioral contingency analysis

Behavioural Processes, May 1, 2010

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the a... more This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit:

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral Effects of Caffeine, Methamphetamine, and Methylphenidate in the Rat

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Jul 1, 1963

It was possible to distinguish three closely-related psychomotor stimulants, caffeine, methamphet... more It was possible to distinguish three closely-related psychomotor stimulants, caffeine, methamphetamine, and methylphenidate, by means of two operant behavior procedures, fixed interval and fixed number. Under the fixed interval procedure, the percentage change in the number of RBS per reinforcement was significantly smaller with caffeine than with methamphetamine or methylphenidate (p < .001). Under the fixed number procedure, the percentage change was significantly smaller with methamphetamine than with caffeine or methylphenidate (p < .001). Thus, methylphenidate had a methamphetamine-like effect under fixed interval and a caffeine-like effect under fixed number.

Research paper thumbnail of Learning by Doing through Programmed Instruction

American Journal of Nursing, May 1, 1965

Research paper thumbnail of Learning and Practicing Skilled Performance

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral Technology and Manpower Development

Research paper thumbnail of Effects of different acquisition procedures on response variability

Animal Learning & Behavior, Mar 1, 1999

Research paper thumbnail of Language Of Sets

Allpeton-Cenatury-Crofts, 1963

Terms: The objects in a set are called the elements, or members, of the set. A set is said to con... more Terms: The objects in a set are called the elements, or members, of the set. A set is said to contain its elements. Notation: We use upper case letters to denote sets, e.g. A, B, C, X,… Def: Two sets are equal if and only if they have the same elements. Examples: Let A = {1, 2, 5}, B = {1, 2, 3}, and C = {5, 2, 1}. Sets A and C are equal (note the order does not matter), but no other combinations in this example are equal. Notation/Definitions: 1. ∈ is read as "is an element of".

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral Analysis and Instructional Sequencing

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 1967

There is by now extensive literature explaining that the operational specification of behavioral ... more There is by now extensive literature explaining that the operational specification of behavioral objectives is the beginning step in the development of programed instruction.1 Without such specification, there is no systematic way to initiate the behavioral analysis which must precede construction of the instructional sequences. In chapter ii, Dale explained that the fields of programed instruction and behavior technology have already made and will continue to make a significant contribution to education by focusing attention upon the importance of specifying behavioral objectives at the outset of instructional planning. In the over-all procedure for the production of a program, the process of behavioral analysis and sequencing is a critical, early phase. It precedes the writing of frames, the construction of learning sequences, the testing of the program on members of the target population, and the development of special formats, layouts, and media. The general location of "behavioral analysis and sequencing" is shown as box "D" in Figure 2, "A generalized flow chart of program development," p. 58. This chapter focuses on one phase of the programing processbehavioral analysis and instructional sequencing. Its main objective

Research paper thumbnail of The Mechner Foundation

Deception, a basic and pervasive biological phenomenon, takes many forms, variously referred to a... more Deception, a basic and pervasive biological phenomenon, takes many forms, variously referred to as mimicry, trickery, seduction, pretense, feigning, masquerading, impersonation, distraction, or false promises, and these share certain common distinguishing behavioral elements that permit them to be classified into categories. A symbolic language for the codification and analysis of behavioral contingencies shows that all instances of deception are based on a misperception, misprediction, non-perception, or non-prediction by the deceived party, and can be further categorized based on features of the contingencies that define them. Instances of particular interest are those in which a deceiving party predicts (and in that sense “intends”) the deception. In those instances, the effect of the deception is usually to the deceiving party’s benefit and to the deceived party’s detriment. In economics, finance, business, military operations, public affairs, education, and everyday social inte...

Research paper thumbnail of Remarks Regarding Charles Catania’s 1981 Discussion Article “The Flight From Experimental Analysis”

European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 2012

Charles Catania (1981) makes the valid point that excessive focus on the creation of mathematical... more Charles Catania (1981) makes the valid point that excessive focus on the creation of mathematical models in behavior analysis can crowd out experimental analysis. This point can, perhaps, be elaborated by considering how the utility of quantitative formulations depends on how they are used. In the physical sciences, the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of motion, and the gas laws state simple relationships among 3–5 variables to which numbers can be assigned. The fact that such equations form the basis of modern technology may have inspired many of the mathematical modeling efforts in the behavioral sciences. But the type of modeling used in physics is not applicable in the behavioral sciences. Constructs like drive, habit strength, response strength, reflex reserve, reinforcement magnitude or probability, behavioral momentum, and so forth (e.g., Bush & Mosteller, 1955) do not behave and are not measurable the way temperature, force, mass, distance, or pressure are. Long before we r...

Research paper thumbnail of The behavioral architecture and biological utility of aesthetic reactions

European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 2019

The article presents a behavioral and biological theory as to how aesthetic reactions form. It ta... more The article presents a behavioral and biological theory as to how aesthetic reactions form. It takes a naturalistic perspective in exploring the likely phylogenetic origins of aesthetic reactions; their functions in the maintenance of human culture; and as indicators of group identity. According to the theory, aesthetic reactions occur when certain affectcharged cognitions interact with transformative effect. The term cognition, as used here, refers to verbal, conceptual, abstract, and derived relational behavior in music, poetry, narratives, and the perception of auditory, visual, tactile, sexual and other sensory stimuli, and excludes respondent behavior. Cognitions become affect-charged and come to elicit affect-linked respondents either when they acquire conditioned stimulus (CS) functionalities via previous Pavlovian conditioning episodes, or when such functionalities are genetic. The theory can be tested experimentally by applying it to the laboratory synthesis of aesthetic reactions and then assessing the result's conformity to accepted definitions and instances of aesthetic reactions.

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral contingency analysis

Behavioural Processes, Jun 1, 2008

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the a... more This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright

Research paper thumbnail of A Behavioral and Biological Analysis of Aesthetics: Implications for Research and Applications

Psychological Record, Jun 19, 2017

distinguishing attributes of effects one might call "aesthetic," I examined hundreds of examples ... more distinguishing attributes of effects one might call "aesthetic," I examined hundreds of examples in music, visual arts, poetry, literature, humor, performance arts, architecture, science, mathematics, games, and other disciplines. I observed that all involve quasi-emotional reactions to stimuli that are composites of multiple elements that ordinarily do not occur together and whose interaction, when appropriately potentiated, is transformativedifferent in kind from the effects of the separate constituent elements. Such effects, termed synergetic, can evoke surprise-tinged emotional responses. Aesthetic reactions, unlike many other kinds of emotional reactions, are never evoked by biologically urgent action-demanding events, such as threats or opportunities. The examined effects were created by various concept manipulation devices: class expansion, identification of new relations, repetition, symmetry, parsimony, and emotional displays for the audience to mirror (I identified a total of 16 such devices). The effects would occur only for individuals with the necessary priming, in circumstances that include effective potentiating factors. Synergetic stimuli that evoke aesthetic responses tend to be reinforcing, via mechanisms related to their biological utility during our evolution. I offer a theory as to how aesthetics may have evolved from its primordial pre-aesthetic roots, with examples of how consideration of those roots often explains aesthetic and related effects. The article suggests that aesthetic phenomena are a special case of a more pervasive aspect of behavior and proposes research approaches involving laboratory models and fMRI technology.

Research paper thumbnail of A Fixed Interval Schedule in Which the Interval is Initiated by a Response

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Jul 1, 1963

The fixed interval schedule described requires the animal to initiate every time interval by maki... more The fixed interval schedule described requires the animal to initiate every time interval by making a response on a bar other than the one on which it is reinforced. This response, RA, demarcates the postreinforcement pause (SR-RA interval) from the fixed interval pause (RA-RB interval) so that these pauses may be measured separately. Twelve rats and three monkeys, working in two-bar Skinner boxes, were trained and stabilized on this schedule. The resulting performances, presented for,individual animals, are analyzed in terms of (1) the relative frequencies with which the animal waits various lengths of time between consecutive responses, (2) the relative frequencies-with which various rates of responding appear, (3) the change in response rate throughout the fixed interval, (4) the average length of the postreinforcement pause, (5) the relative frequencies with which the animal waits different lengths of time between the RA and the first RB, and (6) the average inter-response time as a function of the rank order in the fixed interval of the inter-response time. The joint interpretation of the several measures taken leads to the following conclusions: 1. The probability of an RB increases throughout the fixed interval. 2. The increase is discontinuous at the first RB, at which point the probability increases sharply. 3. The frequency distributions of RA-RB pauses exhibit three discrete types of behavior with no intermediate cases. 4. The (main) mode of RA-RB interval length usually occurs just below the fixed interval requirement.

Research paper thumbnail of Why Behavior Analysis Needs a Formal Symbolic Language for Codifying Behavioral Contingencies

European journal of behavior analysis, Jun 1, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of A NOTATION SYSTEM FOR THE DESCRIPTION OF BEHAVIORAL PROCEDURES<sup>1</sup>

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Apr 1, 1959

One characteristic shared by all behavior experimentation is that stimuli are presented to a subj... more One characteristic shared by all behavior experimentation is that stimuli are presented to a subject according to pre-designed rules. These rules are variously called conditioning procedures, behavioral procedures, reinforcement contingencies, or reinforcement schedules. While behavioral investigations may differ widely with regard to the rigor of specification as well as the nature of the stimuli they employ (even the term stimulus is far from universal), the rules or conditions that govern the presentation of these stimuli must always in some way be conveyed in reporting the work. The purpose of this paper is to propose a notation for the description of these rules. In published papers they are most frequently described by circumlocution, a method of communication which may require anywhere from several sentences to several pages of text. depending on the author's style and the complexity of the rules concerned. On occasion, authors dissatisfied with the inelegance and verbosity of this mode of description have also devised special notations suitable for their own particular needs. One drawback of such specialized notations has always been, however, that their usefulness tends to be restricted to the applications for which they were designed. The notation system proposed in the present paper represents an attempt to satisfy a wide-enough range of requirements to make it a reasonable first approximation to a generally useful system for describing the essential features of behavioral procedures by means of symbolic diagrams. It is essentially an amalgam of four other notations that are in current use: (1) the one traditionally used in psychological paradigms to describe the succession of stimuli and responses; (2) the flow-chart notation widely used in electronics, computer programming, and systems engineering; (3) the notation of Boolean algebra, which has found its main applications in set theory and logic; and (4) the notation of mathematics. The history of science bears testimony to the fact that the advent of a good notation can have effects beyond merely expediting communication. The symbolic notation of chemistry, for example, served as a catalyst for the development of theory in providing a framework within which existing knowledge could be systematized. It is possible that in behavioral science a successful notation, whether it be the present one or some other, could play an analogous role in the classification of procedures. By presenting a set of intricate interrelations in a concise and schematic form, a diagrammatic or symbolic notation can often lay bare the essential structural features of these interrelations, thereby facilitating their analysis. Thus, a good notation system could implement the discovery of formal parallels between behavioral procedures, and generally suggest schemes for their classification. DEFINITIONS OF SYMBOLS Stimuli, Responses, and Time Intervals The symbols used to designate stimuli, responses, and time intervals are the usual abbreviations S, R, and T, respectively. These symbols and the various modifiers they require 'The author wishes to thank W. N. Schoenfeld and A. G. Snapper for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Research paper thumbnail of Efectos de los aspectos secuenciales de la historia de aprendizaje

Revista Mexicana de analisis de la conducta/Mexican journal of behavior analysis, Mar 22, 2011

In a series of five experiments, a number of similar operant classes, consisting of keystroke seq... more In a series of five experiments, a number of similar operant classes, consisting of keystroke sequences on a computer keyboard, were learned and practiced in succession by human subjects. Each experiment consisted of learning sessions spread over several days, separated by either elapsed time or interpolated sessions in which unrelated but similar operant classes were performed. The learning sessions were followed by a final test session in which the subjects were required to choose and perform one from presented sets of three operant classes. The test was designed to be stressful by the imposition of time pressure and certain other contingencies. In the test session, preference was commonly shown for operant classes from the first-and/or last-learned groups-termed primacy and recency effects respectively-with minimal preference for the middle groups. Most subjects showed either primacy or recency effects, and relatively few showed both; the subjects that showed mainly recency effects also made the largest number of errors during initial learning of the last set of operant classes. In addition, certain noncriterial characteristics of these operants were measured. These revealed other effects, in particular the association of performance errors with both greater resurgence of older behavior patterns and greater numbers of new behavior patterns.

Research paper thumbnail of Effects of Deprivation Upon Counting and Timing in Rats

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Oct 1, 1962

Two procedures were used in an investigation of the effects of deprivation upon counting and timi... more Two procedures were used in an investigation of the effects of deprivation upon counting and timing. Under the first procedure, fixed minimum interval (FMI), the rat received liquid reinforcement every time it pressed bar B after having waited a minimum of 5 sec following a press on bar A. Under the second procedure, fixed consecutive number (FCN), reinforcement was delivered every time the rat pressed bar B following a run of at least four consecutive responses on bar A. Water deprivation was varied over a set of values ranging from 4 to 56 hr. Deprivation had almost no effect on the waiting time in the FMI procedure, or on the number of responses per run in the FCN procedure. With both procedures, increasing deprivation shortened the pause between reinforcement and the next response. In the FCN procedure, the speed with which the runs were exectrted increased with increasing deprivation, although the number of responses in these runs was relatively unaffected.

Research paper thumbnail of PROBABILITY RELATIONS WITHIN RESPONSE SEQUENCES UNDER RATIO REINFORCEMENT<sup>1</sup>

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Apr 1, 1958

Skinner's original description of the effects of fixed-ratio reinforcement schedules in terms of ... more Skinner's original description of the effects of fixed-ratio reinforcement schedules in terms of response-rate measures (14) has served as the point of departure for all such subsequent investigations. The two salient aspects of fixedratio performance that have thus far received the most attention are the high response rates toward the end of the inter-reinforcement period and the characteristic pause after the delivery of a reinforcement (1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 13). Fixed-ratio schedules also have some behavioral effects that are not easily described in terms of response-rate changes. For instance, the internal cohesion of response sequencesmaintainedby ratio reinforcementishigher thanit is for interval reinforcement. The extinction pattern after fixed-ratio reinforcement provides some of the evidence for this property. This pattern is characterized by maximal response rates which are maintained until they give way to an abrupt cessation of responding. If additional responses appear, they appear in bursts, rather than at the intermediate response rates that emerge during extinction after interval reinforcement (14). Further evidence for such cohesion can be seen in Dews' (4) and also in Herrnstein and Morse's (7) pharmacological data, which indicate that be-' havior maintained under ratio schedules is more resistant to disintegration by drug action than is behavior maintained under interval schedules. The concept of "Internal cohesion" of response runs (the term run is used in the sense of sequence) will be defined in terms of the probability that the run will terminate-a definition which is not inconsistent with common usage. Thus, the cohesion of a run would be high when the probability of its termination is low. A systematic investigation of this property of response runs would, therefore, involve a description of runs in terms of their probabilistic structure, i. e., in terms of the probability that the run will terminate at any point. Once a technique is available, the effects of various parameters can be investigated.

Research paper thumbnail of Analyzing variable behavioral contingencies: Are certain complex skills homologous with locomotion?

Behavioural Processes, Jun 1, 2009

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the a... more This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit:

Research paper thumbnail of Anatomy of deception: A behavioral contingency analysis

Behavioural Processes, May 1, 2010

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the a... more This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit:

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral Effects of Caffeine, Methamphetamine, and Methylphenidate in the Rat

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Jul 1, 1963

It was possible to distinguish three closely-related psychomotor stimulants, caffeine, methamphet... more It was possible to distinguish three closely-related psychomotor stimulants, caffeine, methamphetamine, and methylphenidate, by means of two operant behavior procedures, fixed interval and fixed number. Under the fixed interval procedure, the percentage change in the number of RBS per reinforcement was significantly smaller with caffeine than with methamphetamine or methylphenidate (p < .001). Under the fixed number procedure, the percentage change was significantly smaller with methamphetamine than with caffeine or methylphenidate (p < .001). Thus, methylphenidate had a methamphetamine-like effect under fixed interval and a caffeine-like effect under fixed number.

Research paper thumbnail of Learning by Doing through Programmed Instruction

American Journal of Nursing, May 1, 1965

Research paper thumbnail of Learning and Practicing Skilled Performance

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral Technology and Manpower Development

Research paper thumbnail of Effects of different acquisition procedures on response variability

Animal Learning & Behavior, Mar 1, 1999

Research paper thumbnail of Language Of Sets

Allpeton-Cenatury-Crofts, 1963

Terms: The objects in a set are called the elements, or members, of the set. A set is said to con... more Terms: The objects in a set are called the elements, or members, of the set. A set is said to contain its elements. Notation: We use upper case letters to denote sets, e.g. A, B, C, X,… Def: Two sets are equal if and only if they have the same elements. Examples: Let A = {1, 2, 5}, B = {1, 2, 3}, and C = {5, 2, 1}. Sets A and C are equal (note the order does not matter), but no other combinations in this example are equal. Notation/Definitions: 1. ∈ is read as "is an element of".

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral Analysis and Instructional Sequencing

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 1967

There is by now extensive literature explaining that the operational specification of behavioral ... more There is by now extensive literature explaining that the operational specification of behavioral objectives is the beginning step in the development of programed instruction.1 Without such specification, there is no systematic way to initiate the behavioral analysis which must precede construction of the instructional sequences. In chapter ii, Dale explained that the fields of programed instruction and behavior technology have already made and will continue to make a significant contribution to education by focusing attention upon the importance of specifying behavioral objectives at the outset of instructional planning. In the over-all procedure for the production of a program, the process of behavioral analysis and sequencing is a critical, early phase. It precedes the writing of frames, the construction of learning sequences, the testing of the program on members of the target population, and the development of special formats, layouts, and media. The general location of "behavioral analysis and sequencing" is shown as box "D" in Figure 2, "A generalized flow chart of program development," p. 58. This chapter focuses on one phase of the programing processbehavioral analysis and instructional sequencing. Its main objective

Research paper thumbnail of The Mechner Foundation

Deception, a basic and pervasive biological phenomenon, takes many forms, variously referred to a... more Deception, a basic and pervasive biological phenomenon, takes many forms, variously referred to as mimicry, trickery, seduction, pretense, feigning, masquerading, impersonation, distraction, or false promises, and these share certain common distinguishing behavioral elements that permit them to be classified into categories. A symbolic language for the codification and analysis of behavioral contingencies shows that all instances of deception are based on a misperception, misprediction, non-perception, or non-prediction by the deceived party, and can be further categorized based on features of the contingencies that define them. Instances of particular interest are those in which a deceiving party predicts (and in that sense “intends”) the deception. In those instances, the effect of the deception is usually to the deceiving party’s benefit and to the deceived party’s detriment. In economics, finance, business, military operations, public affairs, education, and everyday social inte...

Research paper thumbnail of Remarks Regarding Charles Catania’s 1981 Discussion Article “The Flight From Experimental Analysis”

European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 2012

Charles Catania (1981) makes the valid point that excessive focus on the creation of mathematical... more Charles Catania (1981) makes the valid point that excessive focus on the creation of mathematical models in behavior analysis can crowd out experimental analysis. This point can, perhaps, be elaborated by considering how the utility of quantitative formulations depends on how they are used. In the physical sciences, the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of motion, and the gas laws state simple relationships among 3–5 variables to which numbers can be assigned. The fact that such equations form the basis of modern technology may have inspired many of the mathematical modeling efforts in the behavioral sciences. But the type of modeling used in physics is not applicable in the behavioral sciences. Constructs like drive, habit strength, response strength, reflex reserve, reinforcement magnitude or probability, behavioral momentum, and so forth (e.g., Bush & Mosteller, 1955) do not behave and are not measurable the way temperature, force, mass, distance, or pressure are. Long before we r...

Research paper thumbnail of The behavioral architecture and biological utility of aesthetic reactions

European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 2019

The article presents a behavioral and biological theory as to how aesthetic reactions form. It ta... more The article presents a behavioral and biological theory as to how aesthetic reactions form. It takes a naturalistic perspective in exploring the likely phylogenetic origins of aesthetic reactions; their functions in the maintenance of human culture; and as indicators of group identity. According to the theory, aesthetic reactions occur when certain affectcharged cognitions interact with transformative effect. The term cognition, as used here, refers to verbal, conceptual, abstract, and derived relational behavior in music, poetry, narratives, and the perception of auditory, visual, tactile, sexual and other sensory stimuli, and excludes respondent behavior. Cognitions become affect-charged and come to elicit affect-linked respondents either when they acquire conditioned stimulus (CS) functionalities via previous Pavlovian conditioning episodes, or when such functionalities are genetic. The theory can be tested experimentally by applying it to the laboratory synthesis of aesthetic reactions and then assessing the result's conformity to accepted definitions and instances of aesthetic reactions.