Effects of schedule of reinforcement on over-selectivity

Reynolds, Gemma ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2893-6380 and Reed, P. (2011) Effects of schedule of reinforcement on over-selectivity. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 32 (6) . pp. 2489-2501. ISSN 0891-4222 [Article] (doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.07.011)

Abstract

Stimulus over-selectivity refers to behavior being controlled by one element of the environment at the expense of other equally salient aspects of the environment. Four experiments trained and tested non-clinical participants on a two-component trial-and error discrimination task to explore the effects of different training regimes on overselectivity. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed no differentiation between partial reinforcement (PR) and continuous reinforcement (CRF) on over-selectivity. Experiments 3 and 4 both found that a change in reinforcement (from CRF to PR in Experiment 3, and from PR to CRF in Experiment 4) did not reduce levels of over-selectivity, but rather continuing training with the same contingency (either CRF or PR) did reduce over-selectivity. The results support assumptions made by the comparator hypothesis, extending the growing body of literature explaining over-selectivity as a post-acquisition, rather than attention, failure.

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