著者

石井 拓

出版者

日本基礎心理学会

雑誌

基礎心理学研究 (ISSN:02877651)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.31, no.2, pp.175-181, 2013-03-30 (Released:2016-12-01)

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Psychologists may think that positive reinforcement is already a well-known process and that studies on reinforcement are outdated. These beliefs are counterfactual in that behavioral researchers have not agreed on the exact articulation of the function of reinforcement. Historically, an articulation proposed by choice researchers was dominant: reinforcement determines the allocation of different behaviors, which is the manifestation of the relative strength of those behaviors. However, recent studies on the dynamics of choice revealed that the allocation could be determined not by the strengthening effect but by the signaling effect of reinforcement. Further, a study using a reinforcement-omission procedure with a fixed-interval schedule in a choice situation revealed that the presentation of a reinforcer had two simultaneous opposite effects on the short-term and long-term allocations of behaviors. These studies suggest that the repetition of reinforcement inevitably assigns signaling functions to reinforcing events, and therefore, reinforcement as a procedure has multiple effects on behavior. Behavioral studies clarifying these and other functions of reinforcement will provide an important basis for physiological and computational studies on reinforcement.