Abstract: p. 59-62. Autobiography: p. 63. Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. Bibliography: p. 58. / A social response was defined as a discriminated operant which includes the behavior of more than one organism in a group and i at least partly under the control of stimuli produced by the group itself. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between reinforcement and the rate of one kind of social response, namely the serial order of the speakers in a conversation. It was assumed that the laws of learning discovered in the study of the behavior of individual organisms would be sufficient to account for this aspect of group behavior, requiring no further theoretical assumptions. When the response was followed by a reinforcing stimulus it was expected to occur more often. When, subsequently, the response was permitted to occur in the absence of reinforcement its rate was expected to decline. Method. Subjects were asked to come to a series of unanimous decisions about which of several stimuli to try to communicate telepathically to a receiver in another room. After each consensus they were to stop talking immediately, concentrate on that stimulus, and wait silently to be informed whether or not their message was received. After a three-second delay they were signalled whether or not their message had been received correctly and went on to try again. Each consensus constituted a trial, of which there were 700 in all during seven days. A record was kept of the identity and order of the last two subjects to speak in each trial. In a thee-person group there are six possible two0person trial endings. One of these endings (AB) was the social response studied. On the first two days the "correct" signal (positive reinforcing stimulus) was sounded after one quarter of the trials on a random schedule, in order to establish a baseline rate for AB. Days three to five were the conditioning period, during which AB was reinforced whenever it occurred. [TRUNCATED.

No description available.

Thesis (B.A.(Hons.)) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Politics, 1971.

Portions of Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 1932. / Vita. "Portions of a dissertation in the library of the Johns Hopkins university; being the complete table of contents, a section of the introduction, and chapters 15 and 16 of part II."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2007. / "Publication number: AAT 3295550 ."

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Syracuse University, 2005. / "Publication number AAT 3177013."

[No abstract available] / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

This experiment was undertaken to investigate the validity of the postremity principle. This principle predicts, for recurring situations, such as maze, that a response to a given situation will be the same response that was last made to the stimuli present in that situation. The principle is hypothesized as ever-operating. The lack of perfect practical predictions in the maze situation is explained by the instability of stimuli, especially proprioceptive stimuli, from trial to trial at the same choice point. While the importance of proprioceptive stability upon successful predictions has been freely hypothesized, very little has been done to test this. One specific purpose of the present experiment was to test postremity in this regard. The other specific purpose of this experiment was to determine in what way, if any, successful predictions are related to 'right’ responses. It was noted by one investigator that the number of successful predictions increased with the number of trials (and increase in 'right’ responses). The possibility of some relationship has been hinted at by several investigators but never apparently thoroughly explored. A mental maze was used in this experiment. There were twelve choice points, each one with one 'right' and one 'wrong' choice possible. The methods used to control stability of proprioceptive stimuli consisted largely of control of motor responses and posture. In one group relatively little control of motor responses or posture was exercised, while in another group the motor responses and the posture of the subject were held constant. In a third group the stimuli were varied on certain trials. A fourth group had, in addition to stimulus constancy, any choice point that elicited a 'wrong' response repeated immediately, so that the subject corrected his response. This was done to gain more accurate recording of responses, which was hypothesized as being very difficult when the last response is 'wrong'. The analysis of the results indicated differences in the number of successful predictions only between the fourth group (repeated choice points), on the one hand, and each of the other three groups, on the other hand. Thus, no differences were found between the three groups where only stability of proprioceptive stimuli varied. Further analysis indicated postremity was a successful predictor only when it predicted a 'right' response. In relation to this finding, a simple prediction of the ‘right’ response at each choice point proved as efficient as postremity. The results led to the conclusion that the obtained differences in the number of successful predictions between Group IV and the other three groups was due to the incidence of more 'right’ responses In this group (which had more practice). Thus the results of this experiment did not support the hypothesized importance of stimulus stability for postremity, arid also provided an analysis which showed its successful predictions were coincident with repetition of ‘right' responses. This repetition of 'right’ responses could be predicted by many theories. The validity of postremity as a practical predictor and as a theoretical concept was, within the limitations of this experiment, questioned. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / The relationship between stimulus discrimination and stimulus generalization has been explored within several different experimental settings. The purpose of the current study was to provide a methodology which would allow for the investigation of the effects of stimulus discrimination training on stimulus generalization in human subjects. In order to evaluate this method as a research technique two features of discrimination training were explored and related to performance in a subsequent test for stimulus discrimination. These were: (1) the amount of learning of a differential discrimination and, (2) the degree of physical separation between the discriminated pair. Ninety-three male and female subjects recruited from the Introductory and Experimental Psychology courses at Boston University participated in this experiment. The stimuli used in this study were selected from the auditory flutter continuum and differed with respect to frequency of auditory pulses per second. This dimension for which control of attendant physical properties, e.g., duration and intensity, is possible. Second, it is a dimension with which the subjects have had little, if any, nonexperimental experience. During discrimination training the onset of a yellow pilot light followed the response to a standard auditory flutter value (S+). No light was presented if he made the response in the presence of a second stimulus (S-). The subject was instructed to make a lever response only in the presence of the stimulus with which the light was associated. For groups differing in amount of discrimination training, the light was paired with 7.0 pulses per second, while no light was presented to responses in the presence of 7.4 pulses per second. In groups for which the S+ to S- separation was varied the light was again paired with 7.0 pulses per second and no light with one of the following: 6.2, 6.6, 7.4, 7.8, or 10.0 pulses per second. In discrimination training the subject was presented with progressively more S- than S+ trials thereby minimizing the expectancy of a fixed ratio of presentations of S+ and S-. Such an expectancy could be a confounding factor in the analysis of the number of responses made during the test for generalization. This procedure, also, permitted a smooth transition from discrimination training to the generalization period. The test for generalization, which was carried out in extinction, followed immediately after the termination of any given stimulus discrimination procedure. Two changes were introduced during the generalization period: (1) in addition to S+ and S-, stimuli from 6.2 - 7.8 pulses per second (in units of .2 pulses per second) were introduced and, (2) the light was no longer paired with responses made to the standard (7.0 pulses per second). The subject was not told of these changes in procedure. The results indicated that as the amount of discrimination learning increased postdiscrimination gradients were systematically reduced to S- and adjacent stimuli, while the point of maximum response frequency was shifted to stimuli to the nondiscriminated sode pf S+. There was a tendency for postdiscrimination gradients to be reduced to the discriminated side of S+ as the S+ to S- separation was decreased. The particular form of the postdiscrimination gradient seemed to depend upon the direction of S- variations, i.e., in units slower than the S+ or faster than the S+. This latter feature was related to the underlying discriminability of the stimuli used to test for generalization. Performance during stimulus discrimination tended to reflect the magnitude of separation between the discriminated pair. [TRUNCATED]

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries