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A Review of Recent Incentive Contrast Studies Involving Discrete-Trial Procedures

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Abstract

The literature on incentive contrast effects since 1968 is reviewed with regard to variables related to the occurrence and magnitude of positive and negative contrast. The negative contrast effect, although attenuated or obliterated by certain manipulations, occurs consistently with a variety of training procedures. Several studies suggest that the positive contrast effect occurs, albeit transiently, with successive incentive upshifts under delayed reinforcement, but with other procedures it has seldom been obtained, and the ceiling effect hypothesis to account for its absence appears incorrect. An excitatory-inhibitory model accounts for both successive and simultaneous contrast phenomena, and it seems that this model might be extended to explain positive contrast under delayed reinforcement.

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  1. Department of Medical Psychology, University of Oregon Health Sciences Center, Portland, Oregon, 97201, USA

    W. Miles Cox

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The author acknowledges the helpful suggestions of Roger W. Black for the preparation of this manuscript.

Three studies (Crespi, 1942; Zeaman, 1949; Ehrenfreund & Badia, 1962) which reported successive PCEs compared the postshift performance of upshifted groups with the preshift performance of downshifted groups, and since the shifts were made before performance asymptotes had been reached, the superior performance of the upshifted groups appears to be a result of the additional training which they received. Morrison and Porter (1965) found that subjects which responded to one lever for a large reward and to another lever for a small reward responded more rapidly to the lever associated with large reward than a large-reward control group, but since the task involved response selection, the former subjects would be expected to respond optimally to their large-reward lever even in the absence of any CE. Since training was also highly massed, experimental subjects may have responded more rapidly because of satiation among the subjects which always received the large reward.

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Cox, W.M. A Review of Recent Incentive Contrast Studies Involving Discrete-Trial Procedures. Psychol Rec 25, 373–393 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394329

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