ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book outlines alternative attempts to account for reinforcing effects involving information process. It explores the role of attribution processes which determine the meaning attached to experienced events and, therefore, their likely rewarding potential. The book discusses cognitive dissonance which can operate to make greater changes to underlying attitudes in the direction of behaviour brought about by an inducement, when that inducement is small rather than large. At the micro end of things it focuses on fine-grained verbal and nonverbal behaviours and charts their reinforcing impact on quite limited and specific outcome effects. At the micro level, the effects of various social reinforcers on increasing the instances of quite precisely circumscribed behaviours within some transient and frequently research-engendered encounter were considered. Intermittent reinforcement has been discovered to produce much higher rates of behaviour with greater resistance to extinction than continuous rewards.
