Re: Conditioned Taste Aversion (was metablather)


"Joseph Legris" <jalegris@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:43E3BEDB.E246DAF7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Glen M. Sizemore" wrote:

"Joseph Legris" <jalegris@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:43E39249.C8C09996@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Glen M. Sizemore" wrote:

JL: Let's see now...

GS: OK.

JL: A process either meets the definitional specifications or it
doesn't.

GS: Right.

JL: If it does, it isn't new.

GS: Right - by definition.

JL: If it doesn't, the generality of the definitional specifications
is
extended to include it.

GS: Wrong. Temporal contiguity is not - and really has never been -
part
of
the definition of basic processes. I assume that is what you are
talking
about.

JL: Therefore all processes meet the definitional specifications.

GS: No.

JL: Yeah, that's what I thought.

GS: As has been demonstrated so frequently, what you thought is
incorrect.


If temporal contiguity is not part of the definition of basic
processes,
either explicitly or implicitly, then the notion of contingency of
reinforcement is meaningless - every reinforcer follows every response
the organism has ever made - are they all strengthened roughly equally?

What you say is patently false. The definition of contingency (as
dependency) is independent of temporal concerns. Operant behavior is
generally profoundly affected by allowing contingent events to occur at a
temporal distance from a response, but that is not part of the
definition.
Responding is also generally affected by conditions of deprivation and
satiation, but deprivation is not part of the definition either.

There is certainly one sense in which your final question is meaningless;
it
makes no sense to ask about the future of an individual member of a
response
class. It is the response class that is reinforced. On the other hand,
questions about the effects (on the response class) of the temporal
relation
between contingent events and responses that precede the one upon which a
particular event was contingent is an interesting one.

A schedule of reinforcement that had a widely varying random delay
between the occurrence of a target response and the reinforce would be
equivalent to a non-contingent schedule. Contiguity is implicit in the
notion of dependency.

It depends on what you mean by "widely varying" and how the delay was
programmed. I'm assuming that you are referring to "unsignalled delay," but
it is not clear whether or not you are referring to a "non-resetting" delay.
If responses reset the delay, the effect of the delay is confounded with the
fact that you have established a new contingency (a negative one). If
responses do not reset the delay (and this is usually how the experiments
are done) the actual delay between responses and events can be shorter than
the scheduled delay. In any event, you are mostly wrong:



Gleeson, S., & Lattal, K. A. (1987). Response-reinforcer relations and the
maintenance of behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
48, 383-393.
The effects on pigeons' key pecking of unsignaled delays of reinforcement
and response-independent reinforcement were compared after either
variable-interval or differential- reinforcement-of-low-rate baseline
schedules. One 30-min session arranging delayed reinforcement and one 30-min
session arranging response-independent reinforcement were conducted daily, 6
hr apart. A within-subject yoked-control procedure equated reinforcer
frequency and distribution across the two sessions. Response rates usually
were reduced more by response-independent than by delayed but
response-contingent delivery of reinforcers. Under both schedules, response
rates were lower when obtained delays were greater. These results bear upon
methodological and conceptual issues regarding comparisons of contingencies
that change the temporal response-reinforcer relations.





Lattal, K. A & Gleeson, S. (1990). Response acquisition with delayed
reinforcement. J. Exp. Pschol. Animal Beh. Processes. Jan;16(1):27-39
Discrete responses of experimentally naive, food-deprived White Carneaux
pigeons (key pecks) or Sprague-Dawley rats (bar or omnidirectional lever
presses) initiated unsignaled delay periods that terminated with food
delivery. Each subject first was trained to eat from the food source, but no
attempt was made to shape or to otherwise train the response. In both
species, the response developed and was maintained. Control procedures
excluded the simple passage of time, response elicitation or induction by
food presentation, type of operandum, food delivery device location, and
adventitious immediate reinforcement of responding as the basis for the
effects. Results revealed that neither training nor immediate reinforcement
is necessary to establish new behavior. The conditions that give rise to
both the first and second response are discussed, and the results are
related to other studies of the delay of reinforcement and to explanations
of behavior based on contingency or correlation and contiguity.



The first paper employed fixed delays of 30 s if I remember correctly, and
may have looked at variable delays as well. I'm not sure how long the delays
were in the 2nd paper, but I think they were also fairly long.



In any event, even if this wasn't true, the definition of contingency does
not imply temporal contiguity, but that has nothing to do with the
experiments.





--
Joe Legris


.

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