After sustaining a traumatic brain injury (TBI), a person’s ability to make daily decisions can be affected. Simple tasks such as, deciding what to wear are no longer effortless choices, but are instead difficult decisions. Incorporating behavioral assays that address decision-making skills after TBI can help a pharmacological treatment become easily translatable, as it is specifically assessing a certain aspect of cognitive functioning. Magnesium is a multimodal treatment that can decrease apoptosis, decrease breakdown of the blood brain barrier, and lessen brain edema after a TBI, which can affect the recovery of a patient. A discrimination task was used in conjunction with a magnesium treatment in order to examine how decision-making is affected after TBI and if the treatment helps to attenuate cognitive and motor deficits. Thirty-one male Sprague-Dawley rats (Harlan, Indianapolis, IN) were used and separated into MAG/TBI, VEH/TBI, or VEH/Sham groups. Before induction of a bilateral frontal injury, rats were shaped to learn to dig in the sand for a reinforcer and then pre-trained on the dig task. After surgery, rats received either an i.p. injection of 2 mmol/kg magnesium chloride or 0.1% phosphate buffer solution (PBS). Magnesium injections occurred 4 hours post-surgery, then at 24 hours and at 72 hours. Dig task testing began 7 days post-injury, lasting for 4 weeks. The discriminations included two scent pairings; basil (baited) versus coffee then the reversal and then cocoa (baited) versus cumin then the reversal. The locomotor placing task was conducted in order to assess for the recovery of motor function after TBI. Fear conditioning was also conducted to examine the role of extinction after TBI. The results indicated that the magnesium treatment was successful at attenuating cognitive and motor deficits after TBI. The results also indicated that the dig task is a sufficient operant conditioning task in the assessment of frontal functioning after TBI. The fear conditioning procedures, however, failed to produce significant results. Discrimination testing and a magnesium treatment both have the potential to positively impact the millions of people suffering from a TBI.

A comprehensive review of the published work arising from Skinner's (1953) chapter on self-control was undertaken. This was thought to be necessary because many of the papers were of poor quality, and the existing reviews were found to be inadequate. It was concluded that the effects of motivation on self-control had received little attention from the majority of operant workers. In particular, the role of delayed rewards had been neglected. Therefore, the experimental part of the thesis was devoted to the investigation of the effects of a delayed reward on the use of an unpleasant controlling response. It was decided that this could be done most economic¬ally by using an experimental analogue of a self-control situation. A theoretical model of self-control was described and an analogue was devised. Three experiments were performed, during the course of which the analogue was refined and several hypotheses derived from the model were tested. It was found that although the analogue was partially successful, it did not provide adequate experimental control over relevant independent variables. It also resulted in considerable subject wastage. The results of the final experiment indicated that both the subjective value of the reward and the expectancy of obtaining it, influenced the use of an unpleasant controlling response. In fact, value and expectancy appeared to have complementary effects. The theoretical and practical significance of these findings were discussed.

The present experiment is designed to test certain hypotheses made concerning the nature of conditioning in a verbal operant paradigm, and the relationship of such conditioning with awareness of contingencies.

The problem of this study was to analyze the effects of contingent reinforcement on the presence of thoughts defined as anxiety responses. The two types of data, observed and introceptive, were used to determine the effects of reinforcement. The observed data from the peripheral physiological pre- and post-measures included heart rate, blood pressure, and the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale data. The introceptive data supplied by subjects were the daily percentages of anxious thought detections subsequent to a baseline period. The daily percentages were formed by the subject's monitoring his own thoughts, with the monitoring prompted by an automatic tone device which emitted a tone approximately every four minutes. The daily percentage of anxious thoughts was formed by dividing the number of tones the subject heard into the number of anxious thoughts occurring at the time of the tone.The problem of this study was to analyze the effects of contingent reinforcement on the presence of thoughts defined as anxiety responses. The two types of data, observed and introceptive, were used to determine the effects of reinforcement. The observed data from the peripheral physiological pre- and post-measures included heart rate, blood pressure, and the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale data. The introceptive data supplied by subjects were the daily percentages of anxious thought detections subsequent to a baseline period. The daily percentages were formed by the subject's monitoring his own thoughts, with the monitoring prompted by an automatic tone device which emitted a tone approximately every four minutes. The daily percentage of anxious thoughts was formed by dividing the number of tones the subject heard into the number of anxious thoughts occurring at the time of the tone. The main findings in this study were 1. Although not statistically significant, the experimental subjects were found to demonstrate consistently lower mean heart rate and blood pressure following the experimental period. The control subjects' scores were nonsignificantly greater for heart rate and blood pressure at the conclusion of the study. 2. The results further suggested that contingent reinforcement alone did not produce the significant shifts found in the thought frequency of individual subjects. It is likely that both reinforcement and thought monitoring had

The role of operant behavior in the metabolism of brain 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) turnover was investigated. Two and one-half hours following the administration of 150 mg/kg of para-chlorophenylalanine (PCPA), a specific inhibitor of tryptophan hydroxylase, levels of 5-HT were compared in sedentary and performing rats. Whole brain levels of serotonin were reduced in both responding and sedentary animals; however, differences between these groups were not statistically significant. The drug induced decrease in 5-HT levels was accompanied by a significant decrease in session responding. The degree of suppressed responding could be correlated with the level of 5-HT following PCPA, suggesting that the metabolism of serotonin is in part modulated by the rate of responding as maintained by the operant schedule.

Although previous research has shown the efficacy of self-control techniques such as self-monitoring and self-reinforcement in changing study behavior, the adequacy of the experimental procedures utilized in many studies may be questioned. This experiment re-examined the effects these operant conditioning procedures had on the study behavior of junior college evening students by using three groups of subjects exposed to different combinations of self-control techniques. Control Group subjects recorded their new thoughts (ideas relating the course material to their everyday lives) in an attempt to control for the effects of novel procedures, motivation and other non-specific variables. Self-Monitoring Group subjects complied with the control procedure, monitored their study time {by recording study start and stop times) and monitored the number of facts learned (by self-administering quizzes). The Self-Reinforcement Group complied with the self-monitoring procedures and self-reinforced their study behavior (by listing their reinforcers, the cost per reinforcer in minutes of study time and recording the number of reinforcements received). Additional data collected consisted of concurrent weekly quiz scores, final examination scores and the extent to which subjects complied with the treatment procedures. Results showed no significant differences among the three groups on either concurrent quizzes or on the final examination. The Self-!

The thesis is a report of a pilot study in the general research area of behavioral originality. In the study operant techniques were used to train originality in hospitalized mentally ill or mentally retarded subjects (Ss). Originality of behavior was defined in terms of the observable behavior of the Ss in the research setting. Original responses were defined as verbal responses different from recorded baseline verbalizations for one subject (S) and motor responses different from previously observed motor responses for each of three Ss.

No description available.

No description available.

A differential reinforcement procedure was investigated as a means for transferring stimulus control from physical guidance to verbal instructions in the training of instruction-following behavior.· An eight year old, severely retarded female was trained to respond to nonsense verbal prompts which, through training, had become discriminative stimuli for (a) "clap your hands", (b) "raise your hand", and (c) "tap the table". The use of differential reinforcement of singular and paired verbal/ physical prompt components increased the response rates to levels above the 80% criterion level. Training of these responses was accomplished across behaviors in a multiple baseline format.