Conditional Discrimination and Stimulus Classes Relations as Stimulus Dimensions

Conditional Discrimination and Stimulus Classes

Relations as Stimulus Dimensions Matching‑to‑Sample and Oddity Symbolic Behavior: Equivalence Classes

Higher‑Order Classes of Behavior Learning Set Contingencies Operating on the Subclasses within

Higher-Order Classes Origins of Structure

Addendum 12A: Animal Cognition and Cognitive Maps





• Not all dimensions are properties of individual stimuli

• Consider dimensions such as:

- to the left of, to the right of

- above, below

- in front of, behind

- before, after

- brighter, darker

- bigger, smaller

- etc., etc., etc.,.......................



















Higher‑Order Classes of Behavior Learning Set Contingencies Operating on the Subclasses

within Higher-Order Classes Origins of Structure

• Children may learn to imitate several different kinds of behavior modeled

- These make up the specific classes

• But when they learn imitation in general (generalized imitation), they may imitate some actions they had never seen or imitated before

- When this happens, imitation has become a higher-order class that contains within it the several different learned imitations as sub-classes

• Children may learn to imitate several different kinds of behavior modeled

- These make up the specific classes

• But when they learn imitation in general (generalized imitation), they may imitate some actions they had never seen or imitated before

- When this happens, imitation has become a higher-order class that contains within it the several different learned imitations as sub-classes

• Once generalized imitation has been created as a higher-order class, the contingencies operating on the class as a whole may be different from those operating on the specific classes

• Consider following orders in the military

- As a higher-order class, it is maintained by social contingencies within the military

- Fpr example, different contingencies may operate on following a particular order in a specific situation, as in a combat zone





The Problem of Arbitrary Classes

•If we can teach a pigeon to discriminate among two arbitrary sets of stimuli (e.g., sets of photographic slides) and it does so successfully, we cannot appeal to any physical properties of the stimuli in defining the behavioral class

•We can teach such discriminations

•Discriminated operant classes are defined by common contingencies and not by properties of stimuli

Sources of Novel Behavior

Toward a Taxonomy of Novel BehaviorReinforcement of Variations: Shaping and FadingEmergence of New Responses: Higher‑Order Classes Equivalence Classes and Frames

Combining Classes: Adduction Serial Coordinations Coordinations in Parallel Joint Control Fluency and Teaching




Source Definition

Differential reinforcement in shaping, fading and the creation of operants

Creating new behavior by differentially reinforcing approximations to a new response or a new stimulus class; creating new behavior by reinforcing novel instances defined relative to the populations of which they are members

Emergence based on higher-order classes

Setting the occasion for new instances of the members of higher-order classes, including extensions of equivalence classes and frames

Combining behavior classes: Adduction, transfer of function and their variations

Bringing the properties or members of different classes together in new ways; combining multiple sources of behavior so that new functional classes emerge


Problems of Taxonomy

• Are the classes exhaustive?

• Are they mutually exclusive?

• Are they functionally relevant?

• What are the limitations imposed by the environment and by the organism and its history?





• Shaping and Fading: Differential reinforcement of approximations to new classes

Shaping versus associations or discriminations: The problem of negative instances

Relevance to poverty of the stimulus: The negative instances are not a feature of shaping

Consider the phylogenic analogy: We need only consider the environments that shaped the population, and not the ones to which the population was never exposed


• Shaping and Fading: Differential reinforcement of approximations to a new class


• Shaping and Fading: Differential reinforcement of approximations to a new class

• Direct Reinforcement of Novelty: Novel instances defined relative to the populations that generate them


• Direct Reinforcement of Novelty: Novel instances defined relative to the populations that generate them (e.g., Pryor, Neuringer)

• The paradox: Single responses cannot have the properties of novel, variability, or stereotypy. They can only do so in the context of a distribution of responses.

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• Variability itself is a dimension of behavior that can be shaped by its consequences

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Selection for Variation in Biological Systems

• The parallel in biology is that species otherwise seeming similar in phenotype can vary in their genetic diversity, and those with the greater genetic diversity have selective advantages over the others, especially in the face of changing environments. A substantial research literature now supports this conclusion.

What are the implications?

• You can shape using reinforcers, but not using punishers: punishers reduce rather than expand the range of variations (stoperants).

• Therefore reinforcers are preferable to punishers if it is assumed that a wider range of variations makes a population more viable under changing contingencies. Species at risk are especially those in very specialized environments.










Higher-Order Classes of Behavior

• A class that includes within it other classes that can themselves function as operant classes (as when generalized imitation includes all component imitations that could be separately reinforced as subclasses). A higher-order class is sometimes called a generalized class, in the sense that contingencies arranged for some subclasses within it generalize to all the others. Generalized matching and verbally governed behavior are examples of higher-order classes

Verbally Governed Behavior

• Behavior, either verbal or nonverbal, under the control of verbal antecedents. It has also been called rule-governed behavior or instruction-following. Verbally governed behavior is an example of a higher-order class. In a higher-order class, the local contingencies that maintain particular instances may differ from the contingencies (often social) that maintain the higher-order class




Adduction

• Sometimes the separate variables that are the multiple causes of a given response come together in a novel combination to produce novel behavior, as when two or more newly learned words appear together for the first time in a sentence a child has never uttered before

Multiple Causation of Verbal Behavior

• A ubiquitous property of verbal behavior is its multiple causation. Any verbal utterance will likely be jointly determined by nonverbal discriminative stimuli, prior verbal responses, possible reinforcing or aversive consequences, nature of the listener, condition of the speaker (including establishing operations), etc.

• Multiple causation sets conditions that favor adduction

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Seeing a horse of another color

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Naming and Joint Control

• Naming includes tacting, echoic and listener behavior

• Joint control is stimulus control that depends on the correspondence of responses occasioned at the same time by different stimuli, as when a word is heard or spoken at the same time it is seen

• In joint control, common responses to different stimuli mediate judgments of equivalence or other relations, as when a child matches one arbitrary stimulus to another after having been taught to give the same name to each

• Joint control shares properties with the autoclitic

– The problem of history: discriminating that a match has occurred is a prerequisite


• Transfer of Function: The emergence of new relations between the behavioral classes that enter into contingencies (perhaps as adduction combined with novel instances of higher-order classes or as joint control)

Through higher-order classes, as in Baer et al.‘s generalized imitation and Horne and Lowe’s naming

Through equivalence classes, as in Sidman, and their derivatives, as in Hayes’s relational frames

Through discriminations based on common antecedent stimuli, as in Lowenkron’s joint control

Through reinforcing effects based on similarities between one’s own behavior and the behavior of others, as in Palmer’s parity


Sources of Novel Behavior in Verbal Behavior • Shaping and Fading: Verbal behavior may be shaped, and

verbal behavior may be brought under the control of new stimuli via fading

• Direct Reinforcement of Novelty: Novel verbal behavior may be reinforced either by audiences or by the consequences of behaving with regard to newly created verbal stimuli

• Adduction: The multiple causation of verbal behavior makes the novel coming together of members of different verbal classes virtually inevitable

• Emergence Based on Higher-Order Classes: The nested character of verbal behavior creates many opportunities for such emergence in both verbal-verbal relations (e.g., grammatical and semantic categories) and verbal-nonverbal relations (e.g, verbal governance).

• Transfer of Function: An important feature of verbal behavior is that it allows transfer of function from nonverbal to verbal classes and vice versa.




Motivating Variables and Reinforcer Classes

Assessing ReinforcersReinforcer Classes and Reinforcer-Specific EffectsConditioned or Conditional ReinforcementPseudo-Reinforcement

Bribes Intrinsic Reinforcers and the Hidden Costs of Reward

Addendum 14A: Motivating Events in Escape and Avoidance










•Clicker Training with Pets

•Money as a Generalized Conditional Reinforcer


Assessing Reinforcers:Reinforcer Classes and Reinforcer-Specific EffectsConditioned or Conditional ReinforcementPseudo-Reinforcement


Look to the reinforcersLook to the reinforcers

• This has mostly been about how similar contingencies can produce different kinds of behavior depending on how the reinforcers act on behavior.

• Individual differences in behavior are sometimes products not of different contingencies but rather of the different reinforcers that are effective for different individuals (consider the different reinforcers that maintain therapeutic and scientific and athletic and artistic and political behavior).

• We can learn a lot by examining the contingencies, but sometimes it is even more important for us to examine the reinforcers. We do not know enough about the conditions that establish the vast variety of reinforcers that maintain human behavior.

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Conditional Discrimination and Stimulus Classes Relations as Stimulus Dimensions