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The effects of different temporal requirements in conjunctive and interlocking schedules of reinforcement were examined. The compound schedules were arranged so that a reinforcer could be delivered by either a rat's response or a clock. As the temporal requirements increased in the interlocking schedules, the overall rate of responding increased, but the pattern of responding remained relatively unchanged. As the temporal requirement increased in the conjunctive schedules, the overall rate decreased and a pause‐and‐run pattern of responding emerged. When the response requirement was reduced to one in the conjunctive schedule for one animal, a low and extremely stable rate of responding developed.

A 3‐yr‐old preschool girl with deficits in both motor and social repertoires was socially reinforced by teachers for use of outdoor play equipment, as a contribution to her motor skills and as a tactic to produce increased social contact with other children. Her use of outdoor play equipment, and various examples of her social interaction with both teachers and children were scored in the course of experimental development and analysis of her rate of equipment use. Equipment use increased greatly under the social reinforcement contingency; certain desirable examples of social interaction with other children showed a collateral development; other examples of adult‐oriented development remained constant; and one class of undesirable baby‐like behavior decreased markedly. Thus, the study provided a picture of what other behavior changes may take place in the course of behavior modification aimed at a single response class.

Rats were exposed to a multiple schedule of reinforcement. During one component, a bar‐press was followed by reinforcement only if it occurred between 15 and 20 sec after the previous response. This differential‐reinforcement‐of‐low‐rate (DRL) schedule produced a typical slow rate of responding. During the other component, reinforcement followed the first response to be emitted during limited periods of time which occurred at fixed intervals. These fixed‐interval schedules with a limited hold produced higher response rates, described as ‘interval’ or ‘ratio‐like’ behavior. Responding during the DRL component increased in frequency during a tone which ended with an unavoidable shock of low intensity, but decreased during the tone when the shock intensity was raised. The ‘interval’ and ‘ratio‐like’ responding decreased in frequency during the tone at all shock intensities. Initial acceleration of the DRL responding appeared to be due to adventitious punishment of collateral behavior which was observed between the bar‐presses. The more severe conditioned suppression during the fixed‐interval components might be the result of the lower probability of reinforcement after any single response.

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A technique of controlling undesirable or disruptive behavior during an ongoing program of verbal training with a retardate is described. The technique required that the stimulus materials of the verbal training program be graded according to difficulty, i.e., in terms of the length and complexity of the stimulus materials. (This resulted in an initial grading of the stimulus materials into different levels of probability of reinforcement.) Changes by the experimenter from high‐difficulty to low‐difficulty stimuli for two trials contingent upon disruptive behavior increased the rate of that behavior; changes from low‐difficulty to high‐difficulty stimuli for two trials contingent upon disruptive behavior decreased its rate. Thus, contingent alternation of the stimulus materials of the ongoing training program controlled the frequency of undesirable behaviors within the experimental sessions. This technique may comprise an alternative to other procedures which require punishment or timeout from the ongoing program.

In a two‐choice discrimination situation, a cue‐producing response produced the discriminanda for 0.05 sec. The cue‐producing responses beyond those normally necessary to identify the discriminanda thus provided only redundant information. Two of the four Capuchin monkeys studied showed a large increase in cue‐producing responses during reversal learning and extinction, and they reversed much faster than the two whose cue‐producing responses showed little increase. During acquisition of a difficult discrimination, the cue‐producing responses of the first two subjects reached a high level and during overtraining gradually reduced to their initial low level. The results were related to Wyckoff's theory of observing behavior and to the notions of uncertainty, reduction, and lack of information as extensions of the concepts of reinforcement and motivation.