Spring 1985: 2 Speakers ... continued (2)

B:   ... But before you jump down my throat for this, let’s find out if you visualize the 

       same things I did.   I’m sure that if we imagined the same things, you’d see my

       point.   Later on you can decide for yourself whether it has any scientific value.

       OK?

A:   OK. So what happened to you?

B:   Good, I’ll try to be brief.  For various reasons, which I won’t go into now, I was

       curious what a cumulative record would look like if it reflected experimental

       subjects moving towards and away from operanda – especially  away from them.

       I imagined an experimental environment with 4 operanda spaced-out with

       enough distance between them, so the subject can manipulate only one at a time. 

       For example, when multiple operanda are close enough, a stationary subject can

       push a button with his left hand,  another with his right , another with a foot and

       so forth – all without having to move away at all.   He could remain stationary all

       the time.  I wanted a cumulative record that would allow me to trace the animal’s

       activities and whereabouts, in such a way that I could conclude where he’d been

       before he began manipulating a particular lever and what had caused him to stop,

       turn and move away from it …

A:   So …?

B:   So I imagined a setting with 4 separate operanda, which for convenience, I called

       North, East, West and South, each one with its own reinforcing mechanism, and

       discriminative stimuli, and recording equipment.

       I thought the animal would go from one place to another, record his activities at

       each, thus creating 4 separate cumulative curves in one experimental session.

       I’d then be able to look at these curves and they’d allow me to see when he began

       to respond at a particular lever, how he responded there and for how long, where

       he went next, how long it took to arrive and what he did there, and when he

       stopped, and so on.

       If the record showed a straight line at all levers, at the same time, I’d know the
       animal hadn't been working at any of them, and must have been busy elsewhere.

       But I was most interested in seeing a record of how the animal could repeatedly  

       be brought to a stop and for that reason, I had to imagine ways in which I could

       get him to start.   Are you with me so far?

 A:   Yes, but frequency of responding has been stopped in labs hundreds of times

       already.   I still don’t see what you’re getting at.

       You said something happened to you, but you didn’t do anything.

B:   Sorry, let me go on.  Actually, I did do something:

       It’s true I imagined experimental arrangements with variables that have already

       been tried and whose effects have already been quantified and confirmed. 

       I wasn’t trying to think up new independent variables.  I simply visualized a bunch

       of them in the one experimental setting, concurrently or/and consecutively.

       For instance, I located reinforcers in 4 different places, scheduled them at certain

       times in a variety of ways and associated them with a few visual and audible

       discriminative stimuli, positive and negative …

 A:   Meaning?

 B:   Well. food might be scheduled CRF for 10 minutes at North, water for 5 minutes

       at East, temperature could be changed by going South and pushing the lever 15

       times, illumination by going West ... and so forth.

       The discriminative stimuli were supposed to inform the animal what is available:

       where he can get grain for instance, and when it is longer available there, et cetera.

       My hypothetical animal, by the way, was a rat.  What I did was to plot cumulative

       curves for him by hand on millimetric paper; I didn't know what I was getting into
       when I started this.

       I thought I already knew the details of operant conditioning, but what I knew

       wasn’t actually enough to plot a curve, second by second.   I looked up all the
       technicalities I could find in the literature. they're there  I planned 7 experiments,
       it took months, that’s why we haven’t met.   If you’re interested, I’d like to show  

       you the records I made and see what you think of them - see if you also think a rat

       would behave as I imagined he would.

       But for the moment, I’d rather tell you what happened to me, as a result of all this.

A:   OK.  I‘m listening. As a matter of fact, I’m surprised.

       I like the idea of combining various schedules, reinforcers and stimuli in a single

       session.  I’d call that ‘synthesizing’.  It might be a good idea to do such experiments

       ...  it would mean bigger chambers of course; we'd have to enlarge experimental
       settings,   Is this what you mean when you say, “expanding the research”?

 B:   Yes. And the animal would have more room in which to move around, and more

        choice too ...