Observing behavior in a computer game

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
D A CaseEdmund Fantino

Abstract

Contingencies studied in lever-pressing procedures were incorporated into a popular computer game, "Star Trek," played by college students. One putative reinforcer, the opportunity to destroy Klingon invaders, was scheduled independently of responding according to a variable-time schedule that alternated unpredictably with equal periods of Klingon unavailability (mixed variable time, extinction schedule of reinforcement). Two commands ("observing responses") each produced stimuli that were either correlated or uncorrelated with the two components. In several variations of the basic game, an S-, or bad news, was not as reinforcing as an S+, or good news. In addition, in other conditions for the same subjects observing responses were not maintained better by bad news than by an uninformative stimulus. In both choices, more observing tended to be maintained by an S- for response-independent Klingons when its information could be (and was) used to advantage with respect to other types of reinforcement in the situation (Parts 1 and 2) than when the information could not be so used (Part 3). The findings favor the conditioned reinforcement hypothesis of observing behavior over the uncertainty-reduction hypothesis. This extends resear...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Oct 5, 2010·Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior·Edmund Fantino, Alan Silberberg
Oct 5, 2010·Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior·Timothy A Shahan
Aug 31, 2000·Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior·D R Schmitt
Nov 1, 1990·Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior·S Stolarz-Fantino, E Fantino
Jul 1, 2006·Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior·E Fantino
May 1, 1994·Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior·D A Polson, J A Parsons
Nov 1, 1992·Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior·M Perone, B J Kaminski
Oct 1, 2008·The Behavior Analyst·Edmund Fantino
Oct 1, 1998·The Behavior Analyst·E Fantino
Oct 1, 1991·The Behavior Analyst·R L Shull, P S Lawrence
Oct 1, 1995·Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis·J S Lalli, B C Mauro
Nov 4, 2019·PeerJ. Computer Science·Liang MenLouise Bryce

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