Poster group
Details of individual items:
poster
Logical analyses of operant learning, initially proposed by Piaget, have been shown to explain numerous phenomena in operant learning that are recalcitrant to any other theoretical framework. A recent attempt to extend these analyses to classical paradigms has run into difficulty. For the purposes of this discussion, operant learning refers to learning where an act is followed by a consequent. Classical paradigms are those where the relationship explored is a relationship between two stimuli. Existing results, which will be presented, indicate that the two types of learning have completely different parameters. In essence, operant learning in newborns does not occur if there is any delay between act and consequent; in s-s learning, delays do not affect the learning, up to some limit, which is the subject of ongoing research. These results could indicate that classical and operant learning are quite different phenomena. Alternatively, the results could indicate limitations in the possibilities of intermodal linkage of information. Operant learning involves an act and a consequent which are necessarily presented via different modalities. The classical studies thus far completed in this laboratory have involved two presentations within the same modality. Ongoing research will test to see whether the current difference between operant and classical holds up when both use presentations involving two different modalities. If the classical-operant difference disappears, it will have quite serious implications for those theories that have argued that newborns have a capacity for highly abstract, amodal or intermodal forms of representation.
poster
The assumption that infant social referencing behaviors can result from a combination of both respondent and operant contingency-based learning processes is supported by data reported in this presentation. Affective social referencing refers to the infant's use of facial emotional expressions of others to determine how to respond in ambiguous or unknown situations (Campos, 1983; Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983; Hornik, Rinsenhoover, & Gunnar, 1987). Instrumental social referencing, however, occurs when infant's use of cues from others' interpretations of the situation to form their own appraisal or understanding of that situation (Feinman, 1982; Feinman & Lewis, 1983). In this presentation it argued that both of these types of social referecning responses result form respondent and operant learning. It is explained how social referencing can be learned by infants, how the facial (and other) cues provided by caregivers acquire their signal value, how some environmental contingencies can reinforce or reverse infant social referencing responses. The research reported shows that in a context of ambiguity maternal emotional expressions can be learned by the infant as cues by conditioning them to positive and aversive stimulus events. Two experiments will be reported. In the first experiment, using a counterbalanced group design, 18 6- to 9-month-old infants were conditioned to respond to originally meaningless ambiguous cues provided by their mothers in context were ambiguous objects were presented through a puppet theater. In the second experiment, 18 4- to 5-month-old infants were trained differentially to reach for an ambiguous object following joyful maternal expressions/cues and not to reach following fearful maternal expressions/cues using a repeated-measures single subject design. During baseline, none of the infants responded differentially to the joyful and fearful maternal expressions, however, the infant turning-to-look-at the-morther's-face response was elicited by the ambiguous objects in all infants. After several conditioning sessions, however, all infants learned to reach differentially following presentations of joyful and fearful cues. In a subsequent extinction (reversal) phase, the pleasant and aversive contingencies on reaching for the ambiguous object were discontinued producing an extinction effect. However, in the last phase of this experiment the infants were retrained to respond differentially to the two maternal facial expressions of emotion. The results provide the bases for the hypothesis that infant social referencing results from a combination of respondent and operant contingency-based learning processes.
poster
There is no literature testing the effects of shaping a reflex or specifically, shaping a swallow reflex. There is a scarcity of empirical evidence on effective treatments of swallowing dysfunctions in young children who have never sucked/swallowed. This study presents the results of shaping a swallow reflex. It demonstrates the transfer from a respondent treatment procedure (Experiment II, Lamm, 1988) to an operant procedure in the acquisition of swallow responses across 43 young pediatric patients diagnosed with dysphagia (no history of suck/swallow). These patients had multiple congenital anomalies and gastroenterologic dysfunctions prior to and after corrective surgery and had a history of unsuccessful traditional feeding therapies. Although patients swallowed as a result of an eliciting stimulus (Lamm, 1988) the 'physiology' of the swallow was abnormal and varied. Different prompts (degrees of pressure, duration, movement and placement on the tongue) changed the posture of their tongue from abnormal, to approximations of normal during each swallow. It was not known whether systematic shaping procedures could predictably elicit approximations of a normal swallow reflex and the exact point of transfer from respondent to operant stimulus control. A single case within subject, changing criterion design was used. The independent variables were respondent and operant procedures and strategies including a backward chain of shaping the tongue to elicit increasing approximations of a swallow reflex, planned ignoring, positive and negative reinforcement and concurrent schedules including fixed rate, fixed time and variable time. Dependent variables were the frequency and rate of correct and erroneous elicited/emitted swallow responses; the variety, viscosity and size of the bolus consumed; rate per minute (rpm) oral consumption i.e. rpm ounces, rpm swallows, rpm non-swallow/refusal, mean bolus size, frequency of occurrences of vomiting/reflux and dependency on artificial feedings. Results showed a six-level backward chain shaped 8 sequelic responses in a coordinated swallow reflex. Transfer from respondent to operant stimulus control was both expedient and parsimonious in the acquisition of independent swallows and transfer from 100% gastrostomy/nasogastric tube feedings to 100% hydration and nutrition via oral feedings in five to seven days of intensive ABA inpatient and parent training. One and two year follow-up results demonstrate successful maintenance of 100% oral feeding (hydration, nutrition and calories) with weight and height gains, in the home setting.
poster
Much of the basic learning literature has been usefully organizedaround the distinction between the reflex-based Pavlovian (respondent,classical, S96S) and the operant (instrumental, R96S) learning paradigms.The papers of this symposium do not to argue for the replacement ofthese distinct paradigms. Rather, in their several ways they argue forthe utility of attention to concurrent and sequential functionalrelations between elements of the two learning paradigms. Specifically,they (1) illustrate with infant laughter the utility of the search forsequential and concurrent functional relations between Pavlovian andoperant learning phenomena, within and between individuals; (2)illustrate some newly identified parametric differences in newbornsbetween the two paradigms, and explore those parametric differences whenthe same or different modalities are involved; (3) demonstrateexperimentally how infant affective and instrumental social-referencingbehavior can result from a combination of both Pavlovian (CS--US)learning and operant (R96S) contingency-based learning; and (4)illustrate the 'shaping' of the poorly-understood swallowing reflexinvolving its transfer from Pavlovian to operant stimulus control in thetreatment of pediatric dysphagia.