The Effects of Common and Uncommon Elements on the Emergence of Simple Discriminations Page: 5
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response is to be expected when the two are independently correlated with the same element (i.e.
food). However, when the two correlations do not share a relation to a common element, no
emergent simple discriminative control is to be expected. If Sidman's account is accurate, it
would provide the mechanism by which the transformation of function described by Rescorla
(1994b) occurs.
There is one study which has explored the effects of stimulus and response relations to
uncommon elements in a manner similar to that used by Morse and Skinner (1958). Bower and
Kaufman (1963) conducted a phase-style experiment with rats in which a lack of emergent
simple discriminative control was found following the establishment of stimulus-stimulus and
response-stimulus correlations that did not share common elements. In Phase 1, they alternated
between auditory stimuli (tone and click) while delivering food pellets in the presence of only
one of the auditory stimuli. During Phase 2, they delivered water as reinforcement for lever
pressing. In Phase 3, water was delivered contingent on the first lever press in the absence of any
auditory stimuli followed by extinction for all responding as the same auditory stimuli presented
in Phase 1 alternated.
Again, the dependent variable in this study (Bower and Kaufman, 1963) was the rate of
responding during Phase 3 in the presence of both stimuli. They found that when uncommon
elements (food and water) were correlated with the stimulus and the response respectively in
Phases 1 and 2, the discriminative control exerted by the stimulus correlated with food in Phase 1
was weak for the response conditioned with water in Phase 2. The data indicate only a 28 percent
difference in the rate of responding in the presence of both stimuli. However, that number may
even have been inflated slightly as Bower and Kaufmann suspected that some of the
differentiation could likely be attributed to the close proximity of the manipulandum to the5
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Niland, Haven Sierra. The Effects of Common and Uncommon Elements on the Emergence of Simple Discriminations, thesis, May 2019; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1505220/m1/11/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .