Reinforcer frequency and restricted stimulus control.
Pay more for the target stimulus and it will grab control, but be ready for relapse when you thin the pay later.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers worked with adults who had intellectual disabilities. Each adult played a delayed matching game on a computer. Two sample pictures appeared. After a short pause, the adult picked one. The team paid more attention to one sample by giving it extra tokens. They then flipped the rule so the other sample earned more. They tracked which picture the adult kept choosing.
What they found
When one sample paid better, the adults picked that sample almost every time. When the rule flipped, they switched right away. The higher reinforcer rate pulled stimulus control to that picture. The effect was fast and clean.
How this fits with other research
LeBlanc et al. (2003) ran a similar lab setup and saw the same boost, but they also showed the stronger schedule held up better when the session was disrupted. Thrailkill et al. (2018) flipped the coin: richer pay during training later caused bigger relapse after extinction. Same lever—reinforcer rate—two faces: it locks in control, yet can plant the seeds for recovery later. Johnson et al. (2009) added that even neutral lights shown during the schedule can make behavior harder to stop, even though those lights are not food. Together the papers say: rate matters, but high rate is a double-edged tool.
Why it matters
You can use high reinforcer rates to shift stimulus control when a client keeps picking the wrong picture, word, or object. Just pay more for the target. Watch for the flip side: the same rich pay may make the skill come back after you fade rewards. Plan thinner schedules or booster extinction before that happens.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Stimulus control was evaluated in 3 individuals with moderate to severe mental retardation by delayed identity matching-to-sample procedures that presented either one or two discrete forms as sample stimuli on each trial. On pretests, accuracy scores on one-sample trials were uniformly high. On two-sample trials, the correct stimulus (i.e., the one that subsequently appeared in the comparison array) varied unpredictably, and accuracy scores were substantially lower, suggesting that both sample stimuli did not exert stimulus control on every trial. Subjects were then given training sessions with the one-sample task and with a new set of four stimuli. For two of the stimuli, correct matching responses were followed by reinforcers on a variable-ratio schedule that led to a high reinforcer rate. For the other two stimuli, correct responses were followed by reinforcers on a variable-ratio schedule that led to a substantially lower reinforcer rate. Results on two-sample tests that followed showed that (a) on trials in which comparison arrays consisted of one high reinforcer-rate and one low reinforcer-rate stimulus, subjects most often selected the high-rate stimulus; and (b) on trials in which the comparison arrays were either two high reinforcer-rate stimuli or two low reinforcer-rate stimuli and the samples were one high reinforcer- and one low reinforcer-rate stimulus, accuracy was higher on trials with the high-rate comparisons. These results indicate that the frequency of stimulus control by high reinforcer-rate samples was greater than that by low reinforcer-rate samples. Following more training with the one-sample task and reversed reinforcement schedules for all stimuli, the differences in stimulus control frequencies on two-sample tests also reversed. These results demonstrate experimental control by reinforcement contingencies of which of two sample stimuli controlled selections in the two-sample task. The procedures and results may prove to be relevant for understanding restricted stimulus control and stimulus overselectivity.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1997 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1997.68-303