Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to devote entirely to topics in experimental psychology, and discusses the process of reinforcement has also been re-evaluated, and in several very different ways. It shows how physiological techniques are used to identify the motivational substrates that underly instrumental behavior in the intact animal. The book reviews some of the “misbehaviors of organisms”, and describes related experimental results in situations involving electric shock. It presents a yet more radical view, suggesting that reinforcement and punishment are often the outcome of particular scheduling contingencies, and their functional analysis is not necessarily bound up with the presumed noxious or appetitive qualities. The book also describes a situation where animals live in the experimental setting and can gain all of their required food (or water) in the form of unrestricted meals.