Schedules of Reinforcement

Background

Instances of a behavior occur in the context of temporally proximal environmental events. For example, each time a student says “Hi” to another student in the hallway of a school, immediate changes occur in the environment (consequences), which might include a return greeting, a nonverbal acknowledgment, or being ignored as the other student walks by. Some kinds of consequences (positive and negative reinforcers) may make the behavior more likely to occur in the future, and some consequences (positive and negative punishers) may make the behavior less likely to occur.

These relationships between instances of a behavior and their consequences are called contingencies. The development of a record of all occurrences of any particular behavior (e.g., saying “Hello” to someone) and corresponding types of consequence (e.g., receiving a return greeting) would represent a quantitative description of the contingency and would be called a schedule of reinforcement.

B. F. Skinner and his students spent years studying schedules of reinforcement, and many researchers have continued this approach to investigating behaviorenvironment contingencies. Pigeons have often been used as experimental subjects because they are easy to work with, have good vision, and are very responsive to contingencies involving key peck responses and food reinforcers. Most basic schedule effects have been replicated in a broad range of vertebrates, however, including nonhuman primates and people. Many researchers have studied schedules of reinforcement primarily because they represent many of the basic features of everyday contingencies that all organisms experience and that have pervasive influences on their repertoires.

Over the years, a large research literature has accumulated concerning reinforcement schedules. Most of these studies have been conducted in laboratory settings, using both nonhuman and human participants, because it is important to control exactly when consequences do or do not occur. Behavioral researchers have learned much about how behavior is influenced by its consequences, and schedules have become so useful as research tools that they are widely used to produce stable patterns of responding that help reveal the effects of experimental variables, such as drugs or toxic substances on behavior. Some of the schedule literature has also come from applied research, and practitioners routinely use these findings to develop effective ways of teaching skills or addressing behavior problems.

Basic Schedule Contingencies