Choice in Humans: Techniques for Enhancing Sensitivity to Reinforcement Immediacy

Abstract

In a single session adults chose between schedules in which the reinforcer was a video derived from popular TV programs. One choice response occurred per trial. Delay of reinforcement was defined as the time between the response and onset of the video, amount of reinforcement as the period for which the tape played before it was interrupted. Schedule durations (reinforcement time plus waiting time before and after reinforcement) were equated so that an immediate reinforcer could not be accessed more quickly than a delayed reinforcer. Under “informative” instructions stating that the schedules might differ in delay and/or amount of reinforcement, most subjects preferred large to small and immediate to delayed reinforcers. Without this information, no systematic preferences occurred unless remediation training was conducted in which responding to one key was reinforced while responding to the other key was extinguished. Consequences such as points that fail to generate a preference for reinforcement immediacy probably function more as discriminative stimuli than as reinforcers and are therefore unsuitable for testing generalizations from animal research.