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ABSTRACT

Topography of Eye Movements Under Select and Reject Control

Atli Magnusson

THE NEW ENGLAND CENTER FOR CHILDREN

When performing a discrimination task, responding can either be under Select or Reject control. Select control refers to when selection of a stimulus results in reinforcement and Reject control refers when rejection of a stimulus and picking another stimulus results in reinforcement. Given a constant Reject or Select control it is possible to measure differences in responding with some test for stimulus equivalence. Outcome on reflexivity, transitivity and equivalence tests are opposite when responding is under Reject control than under Select control. Response topography of eye movements were recorded with ISCAN eye tracking equipment. Research on observing behavior in the context of simple discrimination has indicated that observing responses are more frequent toward stimuli correlated with reinforcement than stimuli correlated with extinction. In conditional discrimination it is the Sd that is correlated with reinforcement, which is the ‘correct’ comparison when responding is under Select control, and the ‘incorrect’ comparison when responding is under Reject control. Therefore it was predicted that eye movements toward the incorrect comparison would be relatively more frequent towards the incorrect comparison when responding was under Reject control than under Select control. Results from both participants, were according to the prediction.