Adjunctive behaviors are operants.
Adjunctive behaviors such as schedule-induced polydipsia are said to be induced by periodic delivery of incentives, but not reinforced by them. That standard treatment assumes that contingency is necessary for conditioning and that delay of reinforcement gradients are very steep. The arguments and evidence for this position are reviewed and rejected. In their place, data are presented that imply different gradients for different classes of responses. Proximity between response and reinforcer, rather than contingency or contiguity, is offered as a key principle of association. These conceptions organize a wide variety of observations and provide the rudiments for a more general theory of conditioning.
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. killeen@asu.edu
Peter R
PR
Killeen
Ricardo
R
Pellón
D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012055:Reinforcement Schedule; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D013997:Time Factors