Abstract
A detection-theory model to describe the effects of varying stimulus disparity on switching-key concurrent variable-interval schedule performance (Miller, Saunders, & Bourland, 1980) is presented. It describes the available data on stimulus disparity well. Using the additional notion of contingency discriminability, the model is then developed into an account of schedule and stimulus control that is both wider in application and conceptually clearer than the generalized matching law. A basic assumption of the new model is that subjects may not perfectly discriminate that a reinforcer followed a response of one class versus that of another, and this ability is measured as reinforcer-contingency discriminability, dr. This idea is then applied to performance in signal-detection procedures, both with and without error reinforcement, to multiple-schedule performance, and to single-schedule performance. The model fitted the data well, and it thus constitutes a coherent and viable alternative to the generalized matching law in the procedures and conditions in which the latter has been shown to apply.
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Most of the conceptual work on the model presented here was done while Peter E. Jenkins was a postdoctoral fellow at Auckland University.
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Davison, M., Jenkins, P.E. Stimulus discriminability, contingency discriminability, and schedule performance. Animal Learning & Behavior 13, 77–84 (1985). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03213368
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03213368