Kennedy Krieger Institute, Department of Behavioral Psychology, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States.
University of Georgia, Department of Educational Psychology, and Center for Autism and Behavioral Education Research, Athens, GA, United States.
J Appl Behav Anal. 2023 Apr;56(2):458-469. doi: 10.1002/jaba.984. Epub 2023 Mar 13.
Duration schedules of reinforcement for continuous behavior abide by several preexisting operant behavioral economic equations for reinforcer cost, otherwise known as price, and consumption. Duration schedules require behaviors to occur for a set duration of time prior to accessing reinforcement, unlike interval schedules that produce reinforcement after the first instance of a behavior after a given period. Despite extensive examples of naturally occurring duration schedules, translational research regarding duration schedules is quite limited. Further, a lack of research investigating the implementation of such reinforcement schedules, combined with concepts such as preference, represents a gap in the applied behavior analysis literature. The current study measured three elementary students' preferences for fixed- and mixed-duration schedules of reinforcement during academic work completion. Results suggest students prefer mixed-duration schedules of reinforcement that provide the opportunity to access reinforcement at a reduced price and that such arrangements could be employed to increase work completion and academic-engaged time.
强化的持续时间安排遵循几个现有的操作性行为经济学公式，用于强化成本，也称为价格和消耗。与间隔时间表不同，持续时间表要求行为在获得强化之前发生一定时间的持续时间，间隔时间表在给定时间段后第一次行为后产生强化。尽管有大量自然发生的持续时间时间表的例子，但关于持续时间时间表的转化研究非常有限。此外，缺乏对这类强化时间表的实施的研究，再加上偏好等概念，这是应用行为分析文献中的一个空白。本研究在完成学业的过程中测量了三名小学生对固定和混合持续时间强化时间表的偏好。结果表明，学生更喜欢提供以降低价格获得强化机会的混合持续时间强化时间表，并且可以采用这种安排来增加工作完成和参与学术的时间。
