Catherine Taylor-Santa
Caldwell College
Behavior Analysis of Child Development
October 2012





Review
Discussion: Malcuit and Pomerleau’s chapter

Studies



Why the “cognitive revolution”?
Operant chamber model
Research
Kim Kraebel Research
Thoughts




Habituation

US presented rapidity until decrease in UR

Youtube video
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlilZh60qdA&feature=channel&list=UL )
Operant Conditioning

Form of learning in which a voluntary response is strengthened or weakened, depending on the consequences which follow the behavior
Infants

Affected their environment

Affected by the effects their actions bring




Habituation Method
Conditioning Method
Electrode Recording Method (Foley, 2006)



Papousek (1959)

Infant



Cheek touch  Rooting reflex 25%
Cheek touch  Rooting  Ingestion of milk
Frequency of rooting reflex increased
Siqueland & Lipsitt (1966)

Newborns


Auditory Sd & stroke  Head turn  Sugar water
Other auditory stimuli & stroke  No head turn



Siqueland & DeLucia (1969)

4 months old



Conjugate reinforcement
High amplitude sucking (HAS)  Bright visual stimulus
Novel stimulus  HAS
Moon & Fifer (1990)

2 days old


Sd auditory string  Sucking  Mom’s voice
Sdelta auditory string  Sucking  Silence


Rheingold et al. (1959)

3 months old


Spontaneous vocalizations  Social stimuli
Increased vocalizations



Meltzoff & Kuhl (1989)

4 months old +

Change auditory stimulus  Head turn  Puppets
Rovee-Collier and colleagues

Infants


Conjugate reinforcement
Infant kicks  Mobile moves

3 min baseline/retention  9 min acquisition

 3 min immediate retention test/extinction
Sessions conducted 1 day+ apart








Habituate more rapidly


Have short looking time
Greater preference for novelty

Could difficulties involving habituation represent a sign of or even predict a developmental delay?
Maybe…But I was not able to find any research specifically on this.
Toddlers with elevated autism symptoms showed slowed habituation to faces (Webb et al., 2010)



Some infant behaviors

Sucking



Vocalizations
Head & limb movements
Visual fixations
Important implications

Generality of operant reinforcement principles

Infant behaviors could be reinforced by changes behavior brings in environment





A type of automatic reinforcer in which the stimulus changes produced by the behavior increase the frequency of that behavior under similar circumstances. (Vaughan & Michael, 1982)
These reinforcers have a short life. Unlike


Primary reinforcers
Secondary reinforcers
Modification of stimulus or novel stimulus brings back rate of responding
Most potent means to study behaviors of developing children

Experiments demonstrate generality of the principles and efficacy of techniques of operant learning…so why the “cognitive revolution”?
1.
2.
3.
Behavior analysts stuck on discrepancies between human and animals
Principle characteristic of ecological reinforcers


Convenient qualities
Seen as indicators
Operant procedure


Easy to implement
Variety of questions on early cognitive processes answered



Operant research in human learning follow operant chamber model
Relevant factors may not be effectively isolated
Lever Press
VS.
Game-like
Behavior
Primary
Reinforcer
Controlled
Environment
VS.
VS.
Ecological
Reinforcer
Freedom

2.
3.
1.
Baron et al. (1991)
Experimental variable are imposed long



For many laboratories, learning contexts analyze in terms of exploration and problemsolving
Response rates not the most appropriate way to assess if learning has taken place




Operant chamber model to study infant learning is not adequate with ecological reinforcers
Not relevant within context of problem-solving analysis of operant behavior
Rate measure of operant behaviors do not appear most appropriate way to asses learning









Duration
% of opportunities
Latency measures




Voltair, Gewirtz,& Pelaez (2005)
Synchronous reinforcement- reinforcing stimulus provided as long as individual engages in the behavior
Conjugate reinforcement - some property of a reinforcing stimulus varies proportional to a specific response attribute (e.g., rate, amplitude)

Stimulus elicits head turn and gaze orientation

Habituation


Repeated presentations
Allow infant to allocate behavioral resources to stimuli of greater relevance


Signal

Followed by appearance of attractive stimulus

Stimulus has a functional value
Behavior will ceases when


Stimulus loses its reinforcing value
Another behavior becomes more probable




This idea was met with resistance
Informational processing model: Contains more information to be processed
Functional model: More reinforcing






Sort out the effect of 2 functional values of stimuli on orienting response elicitation
Forty eight 4-month-olds
Three conditions
1.
2.
3.
12 presentations 2s visual stimulus
12 presentations 2s visual stimulus accompanied by another event
Visual stimulus on synchronous schedule
Visual stimuli


4x4 checkerboard pattern
8x8 checkerboard pattern
1 st pattern  2 nd 2 test trials  1 st 2 dishabituation trials



Suggest the importance of taking into account the functional value of stimuli when analyzing infant attention
Stimulus complexity is indeed a factor but will most likely be overshadowed by a stimulus with a signaling function





Looked at the respondent dimension of orienting response
Separate respondent and operant process

Respondent- Stimulus elicits head turn

Operant- Head turn makes stimulus appear
4 groups of 16
4 month-olds

Condition Description
Condition 1
1 stimulus a) elicits head turn, b) signals reinforcement, 3) synchronously reinforces visual exploration
Condition 2 1 stimulus constantly present
Condition 3
Condition 4
Stimulus appears if head turns toward illuminated surface. No eliciting stimulus.
SD different from the reinforcing stimulus
(signaled operant)
Stimulus appears if head turns to nonsignaled point in space. No eliciting stimulus. No SD.

Condition
Condition 1
(elic, sig,
SR+)
Condition 2
(const pres)
Condition 3
(no elic, SD)
Condition 4
(no elic, no
SD)
Results
Stimulus looked at less than Condition 3 &
4 but more than Condition 2
Stimulus looked at the least
Stimulus looked at the longest
Stimulus looked at the longest


Operant process, whether signaled or not, seems to be more potent in sustaining infant attention than


Stimulus that is always present
A stimulus whose sudden appearance triggers attention






Associate Professor of Psychology at SUNY
Cortland
PhD in Experimental Psych- learning and memory

Animal models
Post-doc research at Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities in NYC

Developmental perception infants 2-9 mo
Infant and Child Studies Project

Cognition in 3 & 5 mo infants
A runner =)


Amodal- information that is not specific to an individual sensory system

Kraebel, 2009; Kraebel, 2012a & 2012b

Kraebel et al., 2004 (computer measures)




Infants given matching redundant amodal properties (e.g., viewed cylinders while holding a cylinder)  facilitated operant learning
Infants given mismatching redundant amodal properties (e.g., viewed cylinders while holding a rectangular cube)  inhibited operant learning
Why?


Ample room for more research







Baron, A., Perone, M., & Galizio, M. (1991). Analyzing the reinforcement process at the human level: Can application and behavioristic interpretation replace laboratory research? The Behavior Analyst, 14, 95-105.
Bornstein, M. H., & Sigman, M. D. (1986). Continuity in mental development from infancy. Child Development,
57, 251-274.
Foley, H. J. (2006). Sensation & Perception. Retrieved from http://www.skidmore.edu/~hfoley/Perc14.htm
Kraebel, K. (2009, April). Matching Amodal Cues
Promotes Differential Expression of Facilitated Operant
Learning in 3- and 5-Month-Old Infants. Poster session presented at the Society for Research in Child
Development, Denver, CO.






Kraebel, K. S. (2012). Redundant amodal properties facilitate operant learning in 3—month-old infants. Infant Behavior &
Development, 35, 12-21.
Kraebel, K. S. (2012). Mismatching amodal redundancy inhibits operant learning in 5-month-old infants. Infant Behavior &
Development, 35, 360-368.
Kraebel, K. S., Fable, J., & Gerhardstein, P. (2004). New methodology in infant operant kicking procedures: computerized stimulus control and computerized measurement of kicking. Infant
Behavior & Development, 27, 1-18.
Malcuit, G., & Pomerleau, A. (1996). Operant learning and habituation in infants. In S.W. Bijou & E. Ribes (Eds.), New
Directions in Behavior Development (pp. 47-72). Reno, NV: Context
Press.
Malcuit, G., Pomerleau, A., Lamarre, G. (1988). Habituation and operant visual fixation: A comment on comments. European
Bulletin of Cognitive Psychology, 8, 539-547.





Malcuit, G., Bastein, C., & Pomerleau, A. (1996). Habituaiton of the orienting response to stimuli of different functional values in 4-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Child
Psychology, 62, 272-291.
Meltzoff, A. N., & Kuhl, P.K. (1989). Infants’ perception of faces and speech sounds:Challenges to developmental theory. In P.R. Zelazo & R. G. Barr (Eds.), Challenges to developmental paradigms: Implication from theory assessment and
treatment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Moon, C., & Fifer, W. P. (1990). Syllables as signals for –dayold infants. Infant Behavior and Develpoment, 13, 377-390.
Papousek, H. (1977). The development of learning ability in infancy. In G. Nissen (Ed.), Intelligence, learning, and learning
disturbances. Berlin: Spriner-Verlag.





Pomerleau, A., Malcuit, G., Chamberland, C.,
Laurendeau, M. & Lamarre, G. (1992). Methodological problems in operant learning research with human infants. International Journal of Psychology, 27, 417-432.
Rheingold, H. L., Gewirtz, J. L., & Ross, H. W. (1959).
Social conditioning of vocalization in the infant. Journal
of Coparative and Physiological Psychology, 52, 68-73.
Siqueland, E. R., & DeLucia, C. A. (1969). Visual reinforcement of non-nutritive sucking in human infants. Science, 165, 1144-1146.
Siqueland, E. E., & Lipsitt, L. R. (1966). Conditioned head-turning behavior in newborns. Journal of
Experimental Child Psychology, 3, 356-376.





Slater, A. (1997). Can measures of infant habituation predict later intellectual ability? Archives of Disease in
Childhood. 77, 474-476.
Voltair, M., Gewirtz, J. L., & Pelaez, M. (2005). Infant responding compared under conjugate- and continuousreinforcement schedules. Behavrioal Development Bulletin,
1, 71-79.
Vaughn, M. E. & Michael, J. L. (1982). Automatic reinforcement: An important but ignored concept.
Behaviorism, 10, 217-227.
Webb, S. J., Jones, E., J., H., Merkle, K., Namkung, J.,
Toth, K., Greenson, J.,…Dawson, G. (2010). Toddlers with elevated autism symptoms show slowed habituation for faces. Child Neuropsychol, 16, 255-278.