Adventitious Reinforcement of Maladaptive Stimulus Control Interferes with Learning.
Persistent error patterns sometimes develop when teaching new discriminations. These patterns can be adventitiously reinforced, especially during long periods of chance-level responding (including baseline). Such behaviors can interfere with learning a new discrimination. They can also disrupt already learned discriminations, if they re-emerge during teaching procedures that generate errors. We present an example of this process. Our goal was to teach a boy with intellectual disabilities to touch one of two shapes on a computer screen (in technical terms, a simple simultaneous discrimination). We used a size-fading procedure. The correct stimulus was at full size, and the incorrect-stimulus size increased in increments of 10 %. Performance was nearly error free up to and including 60 % of full size. In a probe session with the incorrect stimulus at full size, however, accuracy plummeted. Also, a pattern of switching between choices, which apparently had been established in classroom instruction, re-emerged. The switching pattern interfered with already-learned discriminations. Despite having previously mastered a fading step with the incorrect stimulus up to 60 %, we were unable to maintain consistently high accuracy beyond 20 % of full size. We refined the teaching program such that fading was done in smaller steps (5 %), and decisions to "step back" to a smaller incorrect stimulus were made after every 5-instead of 20-trials. Errors were rare, switching behavior stopped, and he mastered the discrimination. This is a practical example of the importance of designing instruction that prevents adventitious reinforcement of maladaptive discriminated response patterns by reducing errors during acquisition.
University of Kansas, Life Span Institute, Lawrence, KS USA.
Kathryn J
KJ
Saunders
University of Kansas, Life Span Institute, Lawrence, KS USA.
Kathleen
K
Hine
Division of Social Sciences and Education, Pennsylvania State University, Hazleton, 76 University Drive, Hazleton, PA 18202 USA.
Yusuke
Y
Hayashi
University of Kansas, Life Span Institute, Lawrence, KS USA.
Dean C
DC
Williams
Developmental disabilities; Programmed instruction; Resurgence; Stimulus control; Superstitious behavior adventitious reinforcement; Teaching discriminations