Associative conditioning in "Drosophila melanogaster" has been well documented for several decades. However, most studies report only simple associations of conditioned stimuli (CS, e.g., odor) with unconditioned stimuli (US, e.g., electric shock) to measure learning or establish memory. Here we describe a straightforward second-order conditioning…

Students' academic success may be influenced not only by their actual ability, but also by their beliefs about their intelligence. Studies have found that students enter a classroom with one of two distinct conceptions of their intellectual ability: some students believe their intelligence is expandable (growth mindset), while others believe their…

Psychology students frequently have misconceptions of basic concepts in operant conditioning. Prior classroom observations revealed that most students defined positive reinforcement as reward and equated negative reinforcement and punishment. Students also labeled positive reinforcement as rewarding good behavior and negative reinforcement as…

Michael (1975) reviewed efforts to classify reinforcing events in terms of whether stimuli are added (positive reinforcement) or removed (negative reinforcement). He concluded that distinctions in these terms are confusing and ambiguous. Of necessity, adding a stimulus requires its previous absence and removing a stimulus its previous presence.…

Drash and Tudor describe six sets of reinforcement contingencies which may be present in the environments of some children eventually diagnosed with autism and suggest that these contingencies account for the etiology of "autistic" behaviors. Nevertheless, merely observing such contingencies in the environments of these children is insufficient to…