ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the concept of conditioned reinforcement. When unconditioned reinforcers, such as food, water, sex, or drugs of abuse are correlated with previously neutral stimuli (e.g., lights, tones, or poker chips), these latter stimuli take on reinforcing properties though the process of respondent conditioning. Money is perhaps the most common and effective generalized conditioned reinforcer in human culture. A number of complex schedules of reinforcement are described to demonstrate how conditioned reinforcement is studied. The chain schedule involves stimuli that acquire multiple functions (discriminative and conditioned reinforcement). Concurrent chain schedules (two concurrently available chain schedules) are used to study delayed reinforcement; organisms prefer the terminal-link stimulus that reduces the relative delay to reinforcement. Contiguity (the nearness in time) of the conditioned reinforcer to unconditioned reinforcement indeed is a critical factor in the delay-reduction account of conditioned reinforcement. Backward chaining (building a response chain backwards from the terminal reinforcer) is an applied example that uses conditioned reinforcement to teach skills. Brain areas, such as the amygdala and nucleus accumbens, and the neurotransmitter dopamine participate in the regulation of behavior by contingencies of conditioned reinforcement. Finally, token reinforcement is described in studies with primates, including humans. Token systems are micro-examples of money economies, and these systems have helped to manage problems of human behavior in a variety of institutional settings.
