EFFECTS OF REPETITION FREQUENCY ON OPERANT STRENGTH AND RESURGENCE OF NON-CRITERIAL FEATURES OF OPERANTS

Abstract

The present research is based on the conceptualization of resurgence as reappearance of behavior that occurred earlier in the individual’s history but not recently, without restoration of the conditions under which the earlier behavior occurred. In a series of five experiments, human participants typed nonword sequences of letters on a computer keyboard. Each sequence was initiated with the spacebar and ended with the enter key, and was treated as a “revealed operant.” Each operant was composed of criterial (mandated) and noncriterial (discretionary) keystrokes. Participants learned several unique operants, each defined by a different set of criterial keystrokes. The objective was to study the effect of varying the number of repetitions required for each operant during the learning sessions on the relative frequency with which those operants were performed during a test session. The operants that had previously been performed most frequently were chosen for performance most often. Noncriterial resurgence was measured by “antiquity”—how far back one has to go in the participant’s prior history to find previous instances of that same noncriterial keystroke sequence. Criterial and noncriterial components of the operants were affected by the independent variable in different ways.