Stimulus control and compounding with ambient odor as a discriminative stimulus on a free-operant baseline.
Ambient odor can act as a stand-alone SD and, when teamed with another cue, pumps response rate like stacking two green lights.
01Research in Context
What this study did
If you run DTT or naturalistic sessions, consider pairing a mild scent with your usual visual or auditory cue. A drop of vanilla on a flash card, a lemon wipe before group work—these cheap add-ons may boost attending and response rate without extra tokens or praise. Test each cue alone first, then compound, and track the child’s data to be sure the combo helps.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Previous experiments have demonstrated that the simultaneous presentation of independently established discriminative stimuli can control rates of operant responding substantially higher than the rates occasioned by the individual stimuli. This "additive summation" phenomenon has been shown with a variety of different reinforcers (e.g., food, water, shock avoidance, cocaine, and heroin). Discriminative stimuli previously used in such studies have been limited to the visual and auditory sensory modalities. The present experiment sought to (1) establish stimulus control on a free-operant baseline with an ambient olfactory discriminative stimulus, (2) compare olfactory control to that produced with an auditory discriminative stimulus, and (3) determine whether compounding independently established olfactory and auditory discriminative stimuli produces additive summation. Rats lever pressed for food on a variable-interval schedule in the presence of either a tone or an odor, with comparable control developed to each stimulus. In the absence of these stimuli responding was not reinforced. During stimulus compounding tests, the tone-plus-odor compound occasioned more than double the responses occasioned by either the tone or odor presented individually. Thus, the current study (1) established stimulus control with an ambient olfactory discriminative stimulus in a traditional free-operant setting and (2) extended the generality of stimulus-compounding effects by demonstrating additive summation when olfactory and auditory discriminative stimuli were presented simultaneously.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2007 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2007.35-06