THE ORGANIZATION OF BEHAVIOR

Abstract

Sonia Goltz has demonstrated that investment decisions may be affected by schedule of reinforce- ment, partial reinforcement, and consistent rein- forcement.This is an important finding, and it raises a fundamental question: What sort of further work with reinforcement schedules is indicated?In my opinion, we are beckoned by highly promising, but as yet relatively unmined, areas of research that we may characterize as being concerned with or- ganization or behavioral coherence.We need more work at the level of organization investigated by Sonia Goltz.And we need more work at still higher levels of organization, an almost pristine concern.In considering behavioral cohesion, we may begin with fixed-ratio schedules, as viewed by Skinner (1938).A fixed-ratio schedule, of course, is one in which reinforcement follows a given number of responses.In considering these schedules, Skinner (1938) sug- gested that we conceptualize the completion of each fixed ratio as a unit, a response unit.In other words, each of the subunits of the fixed ratio, the key pecks, bar presses or whatever, leading up to the terminal reinforcement is an element of a larger whole or unit, the entire fixed ratio.This is a most important idea, one that applies to all behaviors without exception.For example, letters of the alphabet, themselves rather complicated wholes, are elements in larger units, words, which themselves are units in still larger units, and so on.Learning, we suggest, is a matter of integrating lower order units into higher order units.What sort of reinforcement schedule is a fixed ratio?It may be considered to be a schedule of consistent reinforcement, one in which a number