Ressurgência como Alocação e Indução de Respostas Assimétricas: Medidas de Frequência e Tempo

Abstract

Experimental analysis about operant recurrence are commonly made by molecular measures of behavior. The present study proposes a new measure as a parameter of evaluation of this behavioral process, which would be molar measurements, such as time. The present study evaluated the resurgence of asymmetric responses in three experiments, composed of five conditions each (i.e., baseline, reinforcement, elimination, resurgence and induction). Eleven rats were trained to emit block climbing and lever pressing responses under a schedule of variable interval of 75 seconds. The training conditions vary systematically for each experiment. Experiment I investigated whether (1) resurgence occurs with asymmetric classes of responses, if (2) different densities of reinforcers influence the magnitude of resurgence, and (3) if independent reinforcers induce the allocation of these previously trained response classes. Experiment II was the inversion of the trainings of Experiment I and Experiment III, investigated the effects of the manipulation of the operanda (block and bar) present in both training conditions. For all eleven subjects resurgence was observed. Therefore, the data indicate that the resurgence can vary as a function of two parameters analysed: the history of reinforcement and density of reinforcers.