Stimulus control and generalization of remote behavioral history.
Old reinforcement history can silently reassert control later—check for stimulus control when response patterns unexpectedly shift.
01Research in Context
What this study did
College students pressed a key when a line on a screen changed length.
Some students first worked under a rich schedule that paid every 10 presses.
Others first worked under a lean schedule that paid only after long pauses.
Later, both groups switched to a new mixed schedule while the same line lengths stayed on screen.
What they found
The old payment rules quietly guided the new responses.
Students with the rich history pressed fast; students with the lean history still paused.
The line length alone brought back the style of responding tied to it weeks earlier.
Stimulus control held even though the actual payoff rules had changed.
How this fits with other research
Nighbor et al. (2018) saw the same ghost in extinction: when everything looks the same, old response bursts return.
They proved you can dampen that burst by changing the scene.
Hiroto shows the same rule outside extinction—history revives the moment its old cue appears.
Baer (1974) first mapped how time itself can act as a cue; Hiroto widens the lens to any cue tied to a past schedule.
Why it matters
If a client suddenly bolts, stalls, or speeds through tasks, ask what the room used to deliver.
A picture, chair, or staff member linked with easy reinforcement can wake old response patterns.
Before you adjust the program, swap or cover the cue to see if the behavior quiets.
This quick test can save weeks of puzzling data.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Two experiments were conducted to assess stimulus control and generalization of remote behavioral history effects with humans. Undergraduates first responded frequently under a fixed-ratio (FR) schedule in the presence of one line length (16 mm or 31 mm) and infrequently on a tandem FR 1 differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) schedule when a second line length (31 mm or 16 mm) was present. Next, an FR 1 schedule in effect in the presence of either stimulus produced comparable response rates between the stimuli. Finally, a tandem FR 1 fixed-interval (FI) schedule was in effect under those same stimuli (Experiment 1) or under 12 line lengths ranging from 7 to 40 mm (Experiment 2). In both experiments, responses under the tandem FR 1 FI schedule were frequent in the presence of stimuli previously correlated with the FR schedule and infrequent in the presence of stimuli previously correlated with the tandem FR 1 DRL schedule. Short-lived but systematic generalization gradients were obtained in Experiment 2. These results show that previously established rates of behavior that disappear when the establishing contingencies are changed can subsequently not only reappear when the contingencies change, but are controlled by and generalize across antecedent stimuli.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2014 · doi:10.1002/jeab.75