ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes on how conditioned reinforcement can function to maintain behaviour that is already occurring under various contingencies. A conditioned reinforcer is a reinforcer that depends on another reinforcer. A stimulus becomes a conditioned reinforcer by being paired with a primary reinforcer, or with a stimulus that has been paired with a stimulus that has been paired with a primary reinforcer and so forth. The strength of a conditioned reinforcer decreases the more removed it is from primary reinforcement. Continuous, direct or indirect pairings with a primary reinforcer, however, can maintain a conditioned reinforcer indefinitely. Primary reinforcement occurs in the final or terminal component, which maintains each SD as a conditioned reinforce. Conditioned reinforcers are also involved in second-order schedules and token systems. In a second-order schedule, conditioned reinforcers are superimposed on responding on a single schedule, affecting both rate and patterning of responses. Conditioned reinforcement also helps to see how complex skills, such as arithmetical operations, can develop.
