ABSTRACT
This chapter deals mainly with operant stimulus control, although much of this material, appropriately modified, also applies to respondent conditioning. It discusses the stimulus generalization and discrimination are of great social and practical significance, in that it is important to generalize across stimuli that are irrelevant and to discriminate between stimuli that are relevant to particular objectives. A standard way to study the discrimination process is with multiple schedules, which are schedules in which two or more stimuli alternate and a particular reinforcement schedule is in effect in the presence of each stimulus. The habituation theory explanation of behavioral contrast states that when reinforcement is reduced in one component of a multiple schedule, habituation to the reinforcer decreases. This makes the reinforcer in the unchanged component more effective, resulting in an increase in response rate in the unchanged component. A strong interaction called behavioral contrast develops between the components of multiple schedules.
