Discriminative control of choice by reinforcers in children and adults
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10244402 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Corina Jimenez‐Gomez (0000-0002-4828-9267, Department of Psychology University of Florida Gainesville FL USA, corresponding author), Carolyn M Ritchey (0000-0001-5416-0833, Department of Psychological Sciences Auburn University Auburn AL USA), Adam T Brewer (0009-0008-0860-9714, Department of Education Western Connecticut State University Danbury CT USA), Sarah Cowie (0000-0002-3667-0319, Department of Psychology The University of Auckland Auckland New Zealand), Christopher A Podlesnik (0000-0002-8614-8158, Department of Psychology University of Florida Gainesville FL USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 124 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | e70024-e70024 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-5002 • E-ISSN: 1938-3711 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/jeab.70024 |
| PMID | 40588468 |
| OpenAlex | W4411794340 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 61 |
Research with nonhumans and human children has questioned the notion of the strengthening properties of reinforcers when choices are controlled by what reinforcers signal about upcoming events. We extended this work by developing and evaluating an automated task to evaluate the discriminative versus strengthening effects of reinforcers with two children of typical development (Experiment 1) and 18 university students (Experiments 2 and 3). Participants responded by touching one of two concurrently available images on a touchscreen. Across conditions, the probability that the next reinforcer would be delivered at the same location as the immediately preceding reinforced response varied with probabilities of .10 (switch), .50 (control), and .90 (stay). Both children and students responded according to the arranged reinforcer probabilities of the next reinforcer instead of where the most recent reinforcer had been delivered. The present findings add to the body of work suggesting that reinforcers serve a discriminative function, and we use a quantitative model of reinforcer misallocation to account for choices being imperfectly controlled by contingencies
Cognitive psychology · Control (management) · Developmental psychology · Discriminative model · Human–computer interaction · Reinforcement · Stimulus control · Task (project management) · Touchscreen · Artificial Intelligence · Autism Spectrum Disorder Research · Behavioral and Psychological Studies · Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression · Computer Science · Neuroscience · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |