ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, we described how trait labels constitute pseudo-explanations of behavior. They provide no information concerning specific hereditary or experiential causes. Adaptive learning principles have been demonstrated to be powerful explanatory tools for understanding and modifying the human condition. Adaptation usually requires not only learning how to behave but also when (or under what circumstances) to emit a specific behavior. The same behavior may be appropriate under some conditions but not others. Thus, it is not surprising that describing human personality as consisting of traits may be inaccurate in addition to non-explanatory. Typically, behavior is not as consistent across situations as trait labels imply. A multiple schedule involves implementing different reinforcement schedules in the presence of different stimuli. Eventually behavior will change to reflect these differences. This process explains how the same individual’s behavior may vary as a function of the setting in which it occurs. Socialization of children by parents and caretakers consists of implementing contingencies of reinforcement and punishment designed to achieve desired behavioral outcomes. A culture consists of consensually agreed upon socialization practices and desired behavioral outcomes.
Differential responding to antecedents has been studied in the laboratory under the topic of stimulus control. Usually, responses are reinforced in the presence of a specific stimulus and not in its absence (presence/absence training), or to one value on a dimension and not to another 152(intradimensional discrimination training). The degree of stimulus control is reflected in the amount of responding to different values on the dimension during test trials. If an individual is simply reinforced in the presence of a stimulus, habituation (learned irrelevance) will result in responding equally to other values on its different dimensions (e.g., shape, color, size). Differential reinforcement is necessary to establish stimulus control. Even simply reinforcing responding in the presence of a stimulus but not in its absence is sufficient to establish a moderate degree of stimulus control. Discrimination training with different values on the same dimension produces sharper stimulus control gradients. Research supports two different stimulus control learning processes. A model based on the summation of excitatory strength to the S+ and inhibitory strength to the S- provides the best account of the peak shift phenomenon. Attention theory assumes that stimulus control requires first determining a relevant dimension before responding to a particular value on that dimension. This model best accounts for the overlearning reversal effect, easy-to-hard effect, and ease of learning intradimensional in comparison to extradimensional shifts.
Conceptual behavior involves responding in the same way to different stimuli sharing a common property. As humans adapt to their environment, they establish lexicons of helpful concepts. Much of our vocabularies relate to qualitative concepts such as color and shape names, and quantitative concepts such as size relationships and numbers.
