Increases in rates of punished behavior by the administration of drugs with anxiolytic effects (called antipunishment effects) are well established in animals but not humans. The present study examined antipunishment effects of ethanol in humans using a choice procedure. The behavior of 5 participants was placed under six concurrent…

If the members of a functional response class occur in a predictable order, a response-class hierarchy is said to exist. Although this topic has received some attention in the applied literature, it remains relatively understudied. The purpose of the current investigation was to develop an analogue model of a response-class hierarchy. Children…

Examination of responding under various schedule arrangements is a core component of many analyses of operant behavior. Much of the pioneering work in applied behavior analysis was bred from laboratory research involving the exposure of nonhuman subjects to a variety of schedule arrangements. Hodos (1961) described a schedule arrangement in which…

Pigeons' keypecking was maintained under two- and three-component chained schedules of food presentation. The component schedules were all fixed-interval schedules of either 1- or 2-min duration. Across conditions the presence of houselight illumination within each component schedule was manipulated. For each pigeon, first-component response rates…

This article reviews evidence from basic and translational research with pigeons and humans suggesting that the persistence of operant behavior depends on the contingency between stimuli and reinforcers, and considers some implications for clinical interventions. (Contains 4 figures.)

In everyday life, one can link anticipated specific cues (e.g. visiting a restaurant) with desired actions (e.g., ordering a healthy meal). Alternatively, intentions such as "I intend to eat more healthily" present the option to act when one encounters the same cue. In the first case, a specific cue triggers a specific action; in the second, one…

In this article, I argue that a class of religious behaviors exists that is induced, for prepared organisms, by specific stimuli that are experienced according to a response-independent schedule. Like other schedule-induced behaviors, the members of this class serve as minimal units out of which functional behavior may arise. In this way, there…

The authors propose a simple behavioral economic model (BEM) describing how reinforcement and interval timing interact. The model assumes a Weber-law-compliant logarithmic representation of time. Associated with each represented time value are the payoffs that have been obtained for each possible response. At a given real time, the response with…

Extinction-induced resurgence is the recurrence of previously reinforced behavior when another behavior is placed on extinction (Lieving, Hagopian, Long, & O'Connor, 2004). This phenomenon may account for some instances of treatment relapse when problem behavior recovers during extinction-based treatments. The current study sought to determine…

Four pigeons were exposed to a token-reinforcement procedure with stimulus lights serving as tokens. Responses on one key (the token-production key) produced tokens that could be exchanged for food during an exchange period. Exchange periods could be produced by satisfying a ratio requirement on a second key (the exchange-production key). The…

Research reported here concerns neural processes relating to stimulus equivalence class formation. In Experiment 1, two types of word pairs were presented successively to normally capable adults. In one type, the words had related usage in English (e.g., uncle, aunt). In the other, the two words were not typically related in their usage (e.g.,…

Modern psychological theories of spatial cognition postulate the existence of a geometric module for reorientation. This concept is derived from experimental data showing that in rectangular arenas with distinct landmarks in the corners, disoriented rats often make diagonal errors, suggesting their preference for the geometric (arena shape) over…

Tolerance to effects of cocaine can be modulated by schedules of reinforcement. With multiple ratio schedules, research has shown an inverse relationship between ratio requirement and amount of tolerance that resulted from daily administration of the drug. In contrast, tolerance to the effects of cocaine on behavior under multiple interval…

Aphasia is an acquired language impairment that affects over 1 million individuals, the majority of whom are over age 65 (Groher, 1989). This disorder has typically been conceptualized within a cognitive neuroscience framework, but a behavioral interpretation of aphasia is also possible. Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior proposes a…

Chen, Lakshminarayanan, and Santos (2006) claim to show in three choice experiments that monkeys react rationally to price and wealth shocks, but, when faced with gambles, display hallmark, human-like biases that include loss aversion. We present three experiments with monkeys and humans consistent with a reinterpretation of their data that…