Establishment of Conditioned Reinforcers in Rats

Most verbal and social behavior is maintained by the social consequences like smiles, nods, comments, and praise. Children with autism have impairments in reciprocal social interaction and, often, such typically reinforcing social stimuli do not work as reinforcers. If such stimuli can be established as conditioned reinforcers for the behavior of these children, important social behavior is more likely to be established and maintained in a natural environment. Holth et al., (2009) showed that through an operant discrimination procedure, a previously ineffective stimulus became a conditioned reinforcing stimulus. In contrast, in a pairing procedure, a previously ineffective stimulus was presented just prior to the presentation of the reinforcer, and did not acquire any reinforcing effects. The current study is a systematic replication of Holth et al., (2009) with four rats. This experiment established cue lights above the levers in a standard operant chamber (previously ineffective stimuli) as conditioned reinforcers, respectively by pairing and by operant discrimination. Tests discovered whether the “paired” cue light or the SD light had acquired a reinforcing effect, and was conducted under a VR schedule. The results support Holth et al. (2009) that SD-procedure establishes conditioned reinforcers more effectively than does the “pairing” procedure.