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Conditioning paradigms and their
interactions in maternal-infant interchange. Jacob L. Gewirtz Florida International University, USA Much of the response-learning literature has been usefully organized around the distinction between stimulus-control features of the reflex-based respondent and the consequence-based operant conditioning paradigms. This paper will illustrate the utility of a focus on mixtures among concurrent and sequential functional relations involving elements of the two paradigms, within and between the behaviors of human infants and of the individuals comprising their environments. In several experiments, the respondent- and operant-learning paradigms served as templates superimposed upon facets of the environment (as mediated by the mother's behavior) and of the infant's behavior, in contrived interchange settings. Reports of the experiments involve infant laughter behavior in functional relation to environmental determinants. Laughter can be elicited by tickling and can occur also absent an eliciting stimulus. In the latter case, and apparently also in the former case, laughter can come under the control of consequences (reinforcers). Thus, a neutral stimulus can become a CS for respondent laughter and, absent the US, when respondent laughter is followed by reinforcers, transform readily into an SD for operant laughter. Infant laughter can also provide reinforcing consequences for the maternal operants providing the eliciting tickle stimuli. Finally, the interdependences identified in life settings of the respondent and operant learning paradigms should inspire increased research on paradigm interactions in basic learning processes in human infants and others. Keywords: respondent learning, operant learning, respondent-operant interactions |
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