Conditional Discrimination and Stimulus Classes Relations as Stimulus Dimensions

Conditional Discrimination and Stimulus Classes Relations as Stimulus Dimensions Matching‑to‑Sample and Oddity Symbolic Behavior: Equivalence Classes Higher‑Order Classes of Behavior Learning Set Contingencies Operating on the Subclasses within Higher-Order Classes Origins of Structure Addendum 12A: Animal Cognition and Cognitive Maps

Conditional Discrimination and Stimulus Classes Relations as Stimulus Dimensions Matching‑to‑Sample and Oddity Symbolic Behavior: Equivalence Classes Higher‑Order Classes of Behavior Learning Set Contingencies Operating on the Subclasses within Higher-Order Classes Origins of Structure

Not all dimensions are properties of individual stimuli • Consider dimensions such as: • to the left of, to the right of • above, below • in front of, behind • before, after • brighter, darker • bigger, smaller • etc., etc., etc.,.......................

Children may learn to imitate several different kinds of behavior modeled • These make up the specific classes • But when they learn imitation in general (generalized imitation), they may imitate some actions they had never seen or imitated before • When this happens, imitation has become a higher-order class that contains within it the several different learned imitations as sub-classes

Once generalized imitation has been created as a higher-order class, the contingencies operating on the class as a whole may be different from those operating on the specific classes • Consider following orders in the military • As a higher-order class, it is maintained by social contingencies within the military • Fpr example, different contingencies may operate on following a particular order in a specific situation, as in a combat zone

The Problem of Arbitrary Classes • If we can teach a pigeon to discriminate among two arbitrary sets of stimuli (e.g., sets of photographic slides) and it does so successfully, we cannot appeal to any physical properties of the stimuli in defining the behavioral class • We can teach such discriminations • Discriminated operant classes are defined by common contingencies and not by properties of stimuli

Sources of Novel Behavior Toward a Taxonomy of Novel Behavior Reinforcement of Variations: Shaping and Fading Emergence of New Responses: Higher‑Order Classes Equivalence Classes and Frames Combining Classes: Adduction Serial Coordinations Coordinations in Parallel Joint Control Fluency and Teaching

Sources of Novel Behavior

Problems of Taxonomy • Are the classes exhaustive? • Are they mutually exclusive? • Are they functionally relevant? • What are the limitations imposed by the environment and by the organism and its history?

Sources of Novel Behavior • Shaping and Fading: Differential reinforcement of approximations to new classes • Shaping versus associations or discriminations: The problem of negative instances • Relevance to poverty of the stimulus: The negative instances are not a feature of shaping • Consider the phylogenic analogy: We need only consider the environments that shaped the population, and not the ones to which the population was never exposed

Sources of Novel Behavior • Shaping and Fading: Differential reinforcement of approximations to a new class

Sources of Novel Behavior • Shaping and Fading: Differential reinforcement of approximations to a new class • Direct Reinforcement of Novelty: Novel instances defined relative to the populations that generate them

Sources of Novel Behavior • Direct Reinforcement of Novelty: Novel instances defined relative to the populations that generate them (e.g., Pryor, Neuringer) • The paradox: Single responses cannot have the properties of novel, variability, or stereotypy. They can only do so in the context of a distribution of responses.

Variability itself is a dimension of behavior that can be shaped by its consequences 38

Selection for Variation in Biological Systems • The parallel in biology is that species otherwise seeming similar in phenotype can vary in their genetic diversity, and those with the greater genetic diversity have selective advantages over the others, especially in the face of changing environments. A substantial research literature now supports this conclusion.

What are the implications? • You can shape using reinforcers, but not using punishers: punishers reduce rather than expand the range of variations (stoperants). • Therefore reinforcers are preferable to punishers if it is assumed that a wider range of variations makes a population more viable under changing contingencies. Species at risk are especially those in very specialized environments.

Higher-Order Classes of Behavior • A class that includes within it other classes that can themselves function as operant classes (as when generalized imitation includes all component imitations that could be separately reinforced as subclasses). A higher-order class is sometimes called a generalized class, in the sense that contingencies arranged for some subclasses within it generalize to all the others. Generalized matching and verbally governed behavior are examples of higher-order classes

Verbally Governed Behavior • Behavior, either verbal or nonverbal, under the control of verbal antecedents. It has also been called rule-governed behavior or instruction-following. Verbally governed behavior is an example of a higher-order class. In a higher-order class, the local contingencies that maintain particular instances may differ from the contingencies (often social) that maintain the higher-order class

Adduction • Sometimes the separate variables that are the multiple causes of a given response come together in a novel combination to produce novel behavior, as when two or more newly learned words appear together for the first time in a sentence a child has never uttered before

Multiple Causation of Verbal Behavior • A ubiquitous property of verbal behavior is its multiple causation. Any verbal utterance will likely be jointly determined by nonverbal discriminative stimuli, prior verbal responses, possible reinforcing or aversive consequences, nature of the listener, condition of the speaker (including establishing operations), etc. • Multiple causation sets conditions that favor adduction

Seeingahorse of anothercolor 51

Conditional Discrimination and Stimulus Classes Relations as Stimulus Dimensions