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This experiment investigated the effect of several punishment intensities on two responses maintained by contrasting rates of reinforcement. The responses were concurrently reinforced according to two different variable‐interval schedules. Because these schedules were independent of one another and programmed different rates of reinforcement, the two responses occurred at dissimilar rates. When responses were simultaneously suppressed by punishment, both rates were reduced proportionately until suppression was virtually complete. In other words, the per cent suppression resulting from punishment was independent of the rate at which the response was reinforced. Phenomena found in single‐response studies were duplicated here. Responding tended to increase both within and between punishment sessions at mild and moderate punishment intensities. Cessation of punishment led to a “compensatory” overshooting beyond the prepunished response rate.

A discrete‐trial punishment procedure, with rats, was used to examine how delay‐of‐shock intervals of 0 to 28 sec and shock intensity interact to decrease the frequency and increase the latency of a positively reinforced response. For delay‐of‐shock intervals of 0, 7, 14, and 28 sec, there was a range of shock intensities, for some subjects, over which the punishing effect of shock was an increasing, monotonic function of shock intensity. For other subjects this transition was abrupt. Functions relating response frequency and latency measures to shock intensity were displaced toward higher values on the shock intensity axis with an increase in delay‐of‐shock interval. The effects of “gradual” and “abrupt” introduction to “severe” shock, as well as re‐exposure to previously used shock intensities, were examined under both the immediate and delay‐of‐shock conditions. With delay‐of‐shock intervals of 7, 14, or 28 sec, shock intensities of approximately 0.50 milliamperes or greater were necessary to decrease substantially the number and increase the latency of the lever‐pressing response. For the immediate punishment group this intensity was approximately 0.20 ma. These facts were related to Annau and Kamin's (1961) conditioned emotional response experiment in which a shock intensity of 0.49 ma or greater was required to suppress the rate of a positively reinforced response.

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Teachers were trained in the systematic use of attention and praise to reduce the disruptive classroom behavior of four first‐grade children. Observation measures showed a significant improvement from baseline to treatment for these children and no significant changes for same‐class controls. While the amount of teacher attention to target children remained the same from baseline to treatment, the proportion of attention to task‐relevant behavior of these children increased. Psychological tests revealed no adverse changes after treatment.

Mental hospital patients in a motivating ward environment were using the available reinforcers less than was desired. A procedure for increasing the frequency of using reinforcers was developed: all patients were required to engage in the reinforcing event each time it was available but the duration of this required participation was limited so that the event was merely sampled. The effect of this required sampling was experimentally evaluated for three different reinforcers: going for a walk, watching a movie, and attending a music session. More patients used each of the three reinforcers and to a greater extent when the sampling procedure was used. Participation was increased even for those patients who had already been using the reinforcers, demonstrating that the technique did more than provide simple familiarization. Some familiarization was involved since the participation was slightly increased even after the sampling procedure was discontinued. The technique appears to be especially applicable when reinforcers are being delivered infrequently.

Human subjects were tested in a free‐operant avoidance procedure. Shock could be avoided by the emission of a verbal response of adequate intensity and duration. These schedules were found to control the emission of verbal operants in the same way they control motor operants. Some subjects showed conventional control by this schedule with or without response‐produced feedback. Other subjects verbalized at a high rate under both these conditions until the addition of response cost brought this behavior under conventional schedule control.

In the first of two experiments, periods of noise were terminated with unavoidable shock to 36 rats. The rats' continuously reinforced responding was later completely suppressed during the noise when it was introduced without shock. The rats were then assigned to nine experimental groups. Each group was exposed to different paced variable‐interval schedules of reinforcement, which independently controlled response rate and reinforcement frequency. Periods of the noise were periodically superimposed on these schedules, and loss of response suppression was studied. Differences between the groups were assessed statistically. The second experiment used a steady‐state design. Six rats were exposed to paced schedules which generated two alternating response rates but gave constant reinforcement frequencies, and six rats to schedules which maintained the same response rates throughout, but in which the reinforcement frequency was alternately high and low. Response suppression was studied during a pre‐shock stimulus superimposed on each rat's two behavioral baselines. Both experiments suggest that (1) conditioned suppression is affected by rate of operant responding, high rates being most suppressed, and (2) the frequency of reinforcements obtained also has an effect, most suppression occurring when frequency is low.