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. 1973 May;19(3):517–526. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1973.19-517

Self-inhibiting effects of reinforcement1

A Charles Catania
PMCID: PMC1334147  PMID: 16811682

Abstract

The reinforcers produced by one response reduce the rate of other, concurrently reinforced responses. An analysis of the logical and empirical implications of the relation indicates that one reinforcer must have this effect on responses maintained by other reinforcers even when all reinforcers are produced by the same class of responses. A quantitative expression of the relation leads to a formulation, mathematically equivalent to Herrnstein's (1970), in which the rate of a reinforced response is a joint function of (1) an excitatory effect of the reinforcers produced by that class of responses, and (2) an inhibitory effect of the total reinforcers produced both by that class and by other classes of responses.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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