An analysis of concept learning: simple conceptual control and definition-based conceptual control.

Concept learning can involve either contingency shaping of stimulus-class discriminations or the application of definitions of the concepts. Experimental behavior analysts have studied contingency shaping, whereas educational psychologists have studied definitional concept training. In this paper, we analyze definition-based concept learning in terms of stimulus-response chains. Then we apply this chaining analysis to principles of instruction proposed by educational psychologists. These principles include (a) stating the definition in terms of critical and variable attributes, (b) using examples and nonexamples, (c) using a rational set of examples and nonexamples, (d) presenting coordinate concepts simultaneously, and (e) presenting the next instance based on the learner's previous error.

Saving the world by teaching behavior analysis: a behavioral systems approach.

This article presents a behavioral systems approach to organizational design and applies that approach to the teaching of behavior analysis. This systems approach consists of three components: goal-directed systems design, behavioral systems engineering, and performance management. This systems approach is applied to the Education Board and Teaching Behavior Analysis Special Interest Group of the Association for Behavior Analysis, with a conclusion that we need to emphasize the recruitment of students and the placement and maintenance of alumni. This systems approach is also applied at the scale of the individual faculty member running a university-based training system and is seen to generate special approaches to textbook preparation, undergraduate research, colloquium and conference attendance, career counseling, preparation for graduate examinations, graduate training and graduate seminars, and classroom alternatives to the traditional lecture.

"I'll do it when the snow melts": The effects of deadlines and delayed outcomes on rule-governed behavior in preschool children.

This study examined the control exerted by different types of rules on the behavior of preschool children. Four similar rules were presented to eight, four-year-old children, using a multielement design. The contingencies the rules described varied in the specification of deadlines and in the delays in the delivery of the reinforcers. The results showed (a) rules specifying only response requirements did not reliably control behavior, (b) rules specifying an immediate deadline with the immediate delivery of a reinforcer exerted reliable control, (c) rules specifying an immediate deadline with a one-week delay in the delivery of the reinforcer also exerted reliable control, and (d) rules specifying no deadline with a one-week delay in the delivery of the reinforcer exerted little control. These results suggest that a rule's specification of a deadline is crucial in its control of behavior, but the delay of the reinforcer is of little importance. This latter conclusion further suggests that problems in self-control do not result from delayed outcomes or the inablity to delay gratification, contrary to conventional wisdom.

Rule-governed behavior and behavioral anthropology.

According to cultural materialism, cultural practices result from the materialistic outcomes of those practices, not from sociobiological, mentalistic, or mystical predispositions (e.g., Hindus worship cows because, in the long run, that worship results in more food, not less food). However, according to behavior analysis, such materialistic outcomes do not reinforce or punish the cultural practices, because such outcomes are too delayed, too improbable, or individually too small to directly reinforce or punish the cultural practices (e.g., the food increase is too delayed to reinforce the cow worship). Therefore, the molar, materialistic contingencies need the support of molecular, behavioral contingencies. And according to the present theory of rule-governed behavior, the statement of rules describing those molar, materialistic contingencies can establish the needed molecular contingencies. Given the proper behavioral history, such rule statements combine with noncompliance to produce a learned aversive condition (often labeled fear, anxiety, or guilt). The termination of this aversive condition reinforces compliance, just as its presentation punishes noncompliance (e.g., the termination of guilt reinforces the tending to a sick cow). In addition, supernatural rules often supplement these materialistic rules. Furthermore, the production of both materialistic and supernatural rules needs cultural designers who understand the molar, materialistic contingencies.

Maintaining responding during stimulus generalization testing in extinction.

Resistance to extinction and generalization gradients were studied following training with a long-adjusting-interval schedule. One large reinforcer occurred at the end of each daily training session. Sessions varied in length from 20 sec to 42.66 min, but were usually the latter. Repeated generalization tests were subsequently conducted for these subjects and subjects trained with a more conventional short-random-interval schedule. The long-adjusting-interval schedule produced generalization gradients that were not qualitatively different from those produced by the conventional procedure. However, the advantages of the long-adjusting-interval schedule are: (1) greater resistance to extinction both within and across generalization tests and (2) more stable gradient slopes within and across tests.

Concurrent schedules of interresponse time reinforcement: probability of reinforcement and the lower bounds of the reinforced interresponse time intervals.

Data were obtained with rats on the effects of interresponse time contingent reinforcement of the lever press response using schedules in which interresponse times falling within either of two temporal intervals could be reinforced. Some of the findings were (a) the mode of the interresponse time distribution generally occurred near the first lower bound when the maximum reinforcement rate for the two lower bounds was equal; this also frequently occurred even when the reinforcement rate was less for the first lower bound; (b) as is the case with schedules using a single interval of reinforced interresponse times the values of the lower bounds partially determined the location and spread of the distributions; but the particular pair of values used did not seem to influence the effects of the probabilities of reinforcement; (c) although the modal interresponse time was usually at the lower bound of one of the two intervals of reinforced interresponse times, no simple relation existed between either the probability or rate of reinforcement of interresponse times in these two intervals and the location of this mode.