Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1950. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / Gradients of extinction were determined for an instrumental response, with circle size as the stimulus dimension. The Ss were 69 albino rats. All animals were given equal training in a runway to each of three stimuli, consisting of metal disks painted white and having areas of 20 cm2 , 40 cm2, and 79 cm2, respectively. After the training series of 30 trials, 27 animals were given 10 extinction trials to the 20-om2 circle, and 30 animals, to the 79-om2 circle. Each animal was then given a test-extinction series of 20 trials to one of the three stimuli, with approximately equal groups assigned to each stimulus. A control group of 12 animals was given both preliminary and test-extinction series to the 40-om2 circle [TRUNCATED].

This thesis discusses the valence of stimulus material as a variable in incidental learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The design of this study was to examine some of the relationships between training and testing procedures used to demonstrate generalization and discrimination behavior. The emphasis of this paper was to consider both generalization and discrimination primarily as experimental procedures. This approach permits the degree of stimulus control introduced by any form of training to be controlled, thus, the data obtained by different test procedures can be compared from a common behavioral baseline. Human subjects were trained with an operant learning task to auditory pitch stimuli with reinforcement of the flash of a light and a displayed cumulative score. The experimental stimuli were eight physically equal spaced sine wave frequencies. All subjects were trained to one of three experimental training procedures. Procedure A was two stimuli, single response training where responses to one of the stimuli were reinforced while responses to the second were never reinforced. The second method - Procedure B - was too stimuli, two response training. Two operant switches were available and each switch was correlated with reinforcement with one of the two training stimuli. Procedure C was single stimulus, single response training with responses in the presence of the training stimulus reinforced. During training, subjects were advanced from a CRF reinforcement contingency to a VI 20" reinforcement schedule. The stimulus presentation periods were of ten seconds duration alternated with five second time out periods. Following training, subjects were tested by one of two procedures designed to reflect generalization and discrimination behavior. The criteria were based on the number of test stimuli introduced and the proportion of test stimuli presentations to training stimulus presentations. During both types of testing, reinforcement to the positive training stimuli was maintained on the VI 20" schedule. The Generalization testing consisted of twenty presentations of the training stimuli together with five presentations of all other stimuli in the experimental series. Only one test stimulus for each positive training stimulus was introduced during Discrimination testing, and this was presented equally as often as the training stimuli. All subjects were given ten presentation of each stimulus, and five subjects in the groups trained under Procedure B and Procedure C were given extended training of an additional twenty-five trials. [TRUNCATED] / 2999-01-01

The present study investigated the use of stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) as the first step to build an echoic repertoire with children with no vocal communication skills. We began with echoic probes to establish the child did not have the target sound in their echoic repertoire, then implemented SSP to increase the rate of the target vocalization, and systematically added direct reinforcement, and a delay, until the participant responded in 80% of trials; we then implemented echoic training. We conducted this procedure with 3 young children with autism. This procedure was effective for one of three participants, and her echoic learning history immediately generalized to other sounds. For the other two participants, SSP increased the rate of vocalizations; however, they did not respond in enough trials to move to echoic training before withdrawing from the study. This study provides preliminary evidence for the use of SSP as part of echoic training for children with limited functional communication.

A computerized program was designed to test whether arranging a common element in two, otherwise independent, 2-term correlations (stimulus-stimulus and response-stimulus) would result in emergent simple discriminative-stimulus properties for the antecedent stimulus relative to an arrangement with no common elements programmed. Data from 8 adult participants in this experiment indicate that common element arrangements led to relatively high rates of responding in the presence of the putative discriminative stimulus and relatively low rates or no responding in the presence of the putative s-delta during testing in extinction. Conversely, the uncommon element arrangements produced no clear discriminative control. The current data reflect a comparison of arrangements across subjects. These data support Sidman's (2000) suggestion that common elements among contingencies are sufficient to produce stimulus classes and cause class mergers. The data also have implications for thinking about the mechanism by which and the conditions under which discriminative control develops. Finally, these data have the potential to inform the programming and implementation of reinforcement contingencies in applied settings.

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