Previous research has demonstrated that destructive behavior may be reduced through noncontingent presentation of attention when attention is identified as the stimulus responsible for behavioral maintenance. Because it may not always be possible to deliver attention in all situations, we examined the extent to which alternative stimuli that have been identified through a choice assessment woul...

BACKGROUND Altered sensitivity to positive reinforcement has been hypothesized to contribute to the symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this study, we evaluated the ability of children with and without ADHD to adapt their behavior to changing reinforcer availability. METHOD Of one hundred sixty-seven children, 97 diagnosed with ADHD completed a signal-detection tas...

It is well established that variations in an operant response can be differentiated by arranging appropriate reinforcement conditions. For example, Skinner (1938) and Ferster and Skinner (1957) have selectively reinforced duration, force, and rate of lever pressing in rats. In each case, reinforcement was applied whenever the "correct" response variation occurred and was withheld for all other ...

Our data rule out a broad class of behavioral models in which behavioral change is guided by differential reinforcement. To demonstrate this, we showed that the number of reinforcers missed before the subject shifted its behavior was not sufficient to drive behavioral change. What's more, many subjects shifted their behavior to a more optimal strategy even when they had not yet missed a single ...

Resurgence has commonly been viewed as the recovery of an extinguished instrumental behavior that occurs when an alternative behavior that has replaced it is also extinguished. Three experiments with rat subjects examined the effects on resurgence of the temporal distribution of reinforcement for the alternative behavior that is presented while the first response is being eliminated. Experiment...