Conditioned reinforcement of human observing behavior by descriptive and arbitrary verbal stimuli.
Nonsense words paired with extinction became reinforcers that college students worked to see.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked 12 college students to press one of two keys while points piled up on a VI schedule.
Pressing the left key flashed a short nonsense phrase like "green-EXT" only during the extinction part of the cycle.
Pressing the right key showed the same phrase, but it came on at random and meant nothing about upcoming points.
Sessions ran until each student had clear preference for one key.
What they found
Every student favored the key that produced the phrase tied to extinction.
They kept pressing even though the message never gave extra points.
The arbitrary words had become conditioned reinforcers simply by predicting "no reinforcement coming."
This shows humans will work for cues that signal bad news if those cues reduce uncertainty.
How this fits with other research
Michael (1974) saw the same flip effect: when richer schedules moved to the other key, the once-loved cue lost its power.
The 1992 study keeps that rule but proves the cue can be meaningless words and still work.
Russell et al. (2018) later showed tokens act like generalized conditioned reinforcers for kids with autism.
Together the line says: any stimulus—words, coins, lights—can gain reinforcing strength once it predicts schedule news.
Why it matters
You can create useful conditioned reinforcers out of thin air. Pair a short phrase, emoji, or sound with the moment a child hits extinction or correction, then let the child access that cue for correct responses later. The cue now buys you free reinforcement power without extra tangibles.
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Pick one neutral phrase ("check mark"), show it only during brief extinction bursts, then let the learner press a button to see that same phrase after correct responses.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
College students earned monetary reinforcers by pressing a key according to a compound schedule with variable-interval and extinction components. Pressing additional keys occasionally produced displays of either of two verbal stimuli; one was uncorrelated with the schedule components, and the other was correlated with the extinction component. In Experiments 1 and 2, the display area of the apparatus was blank unless an observing key was pressed, whereupon a descriptive message appeared. Most students preferred an uncorrelated stimulus stating that "Some of this time scores are TWICE AS LIKELY as normal, and some of this time NO SCORES can be earned" over a stimulus stating that "At this time NO SCORES can be earned." In Experiment 3, the display area indicated that "The Current Status of the Program is: NOT SHOWN." Presses on the observing keys replaced this message with stimuli that provided arbitrary labels for the schedule conditions. All of the students preferred a stimulus stating that "The Current Status of the Program is: B" over an uncorrelated stimulus stating that "The Current Status of the Program is: either A or B." Thus, under some circumstances, observing was maintained by a stimulus correlated with extinction-a finding that poses a challenge for Pavolvian accounts of conditioned reinforcement. Differences in the maintenance of observing by the descriptive and arbitrary stimuli may be attributed to differences in either the strength or nature of the instructional control exerted by the verbal stimuli.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1992 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1992.58-557