The major concern of the study was to determine what differences, if any, in independent reading-work behaviors were observed between baseline and experimental conditions using the Rules, Ignore, Praise technique with two seven year old children. During the reinforcement period children worked harder. Bibliography. (Author/AF)

Research supported by United States Public Health Service Grant MH-12908. Portions of the study were presented to the Society for Psychophysiological Research, San Diego, 1967.

Effects of repeated administration of cocaine to animals behaving under operant contingencies have depended on when the drug is given. Moderate doses given presession have generally led to a decrease in the drug's effect, an outcome usually referred to as tolerance. When these same doses have been given after sessions, the usual result has been no…

A time window is a limited period after an event initially occurs in which additional information can be integrated with the memory of that event. It shuts when the memory is forgotten. The time window hypothesis holds that the impact of a manipulation at different points within the time window is nonuniform. In two operant conditioning…

This paper proposes that an organism's integrated repertoire of operant behavior has the status of a biological system, similar to other biological systems, like the nervous, cardiovascular, or immune systems. Evidence from a number of sources indicates that the distinctions between biological and behavioral events is often misleading, engendering…

One control group and eight experimental groups, each composed of 12 first grade children, participated in this experiment. It was designed to investigate the effects of frequency of reinforcement and repeated evaluation of stimuli on the conditioning of preferences. Each child participated in the experiment for seven consecutive school days. The…

A survey was conducted of 406 elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers to determine their understanding, acceptance, and use of the principle of operant conditioning. The treatment of data was by percent and chi square analysis primarily according to sex, experience, degree, and position. Subjects reported that a) they believed that the…

The present experiments investigated the effects of several classical conditioning manipulations on the performance of young children in an instrumental discrimination learning situation. Two predictions from general conditioning-extinction theory were tested: (1) acquisition of an instrumental response to a stimulus for a positive reinforcer in a…

Two studies were done to examine aggressive behavior in humans. In Experiment One, adults working on a plunger pulling task could receive a 3.5 ma shock at 75% probability every two minutes. The shock was unrelated to their plunger pulling behavior. Subjects could press a toggle switch to deliver electric shock to the experimenter, who was in the…

An attempt is made to determine whether a behaviorally-oriented conditioning approach, "covert sensitization," is more effective in the treatment of alcoholism than the commonly used problem-solving approach, and whether female counselors employing covert sensitization were more successful than males. Thirty-two subjects selected on…

This case study demonstrates the value of conceptualizing functional somatic disorders as operants. The subject, an adolescent girl, diagnosed as having a "hysterical neurosis," manifested the symptoms of incessant coughing and mutism. The cough and mutism were treated by extinction and shaping, respectively. Positive results were obtained.…