Resurgence of spatially defined behavior

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2021

First Committee Member

Dickson, Chata A.

Second Committee Member

Pinkston, Jonathan

Third Committee Member

Ahearn, William H.

Abstract

"We extended previous research on resurgence by evaluating durations of dwelling within experimenter-defined spaces in a field. Participants were 7 typically developing adults who were instructed at the start of the study to move about the area and to listen for a whistle, which would signify accrual of a lottery ticket that increased their chances of winning a prize. Each session consisted of 3, 4-min phases. In the first phase, the experimenter sounded a whistle on a VI 10 s schedule only when the participant was in one of the four quadrants; in the next phase the whistle sounded only when the participant was in another of the quadrants, and in the third phase, no whistles were sounded. We were interested in the resurgence of dwelling in the first quadrant during the third phase of each session. Resurgence occurred in 22 of the 30 evaluations, and was repeated across and within participants, and with and without contingency reversals. Future research may apply similar methods, and this approach may solve some of the problems with generality that have been identified by researchers and practitioners wishing to extend the findings of resurgence studies to relevant human contexts."

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