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Incentives are a popular method to achieve desired employee performance; however, research on optimal incentive magnitude is lacking. Behavioral economic demand curves model persistence of responding in the face of increasing cost and may be suitable to examine the reinforcing value of incentives on work performance. The present use‐inspired basic study integrated an experiential human operant task within a crowdsourcing platform to evaluate the applicability of behavioral economics for quantifying changes in workforce attrition. Participants included 88 Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers who earned either a $0.05 or $0.10 incentive for completing a progressively increasing response requirement. Analyses revealed statistically significant differences in breakpoint between the two groups. Additionally, a novel translation of the Kaplan‐Meier survival‐curve analyses for use within a demand curve framework allowed for examination of elasticity of workforce attrition. Results indicate greater inelastic attrition in the $0.05 group. We discuss the benefits of a behavioral economic approach to modeling employee behavior, how the metrics obtained from the elasticity of workforce attrition analyses (e.g., P max ) may be used to set goals for employee behavior while balancing organizational costs, and how economy type may have influenced observed outcomes.

The current study developed and tested a multiple‐stimulus‐without‐replacement ( MSWO ) assessment for potential sexual partners for use in research on human immunodeficiency virus. College students ( N = 41) first completed an MSWO assessment and then completed a hypothetical purchase task for encounters with partners identified by the MSWO as high, median, and low preference. Overall, hypothetical purchase task responding was consistent with that from the MSWO , in that the highest valuation was observed for the high‐preference partner and the lowest for the low‐preference partner. Potentially interesting individual differences in purchase task responding, however, were obtained; some subjects showed differentiated responding among the 3 preference levels ( n = 15), whereas others similarly valued high‐ and median‐preference partners ( n = 5), and others similarly valued low‐ and median‐preference partners ( n = 18).

Individuals with developmental disabilities may fail to attend to multiple features in compound stimuli (e.g., arrays of pictures, letters within words) with detrimental effects on learning. Participants were 5 children with autism spectrum disorder who had low to intermediate accuracy scores (35% to 84%) on a computer‐presented compound matching task. Sample stimuli were pairs of icons (e.g., chair–tree), the correct comparison was identical to the sample, and each incorrect comparison had one icon in common with the sample (e.g., chair–sun, airplane–tree). A 5‐step tabletop sorting‐to‐matching training procedure was used to teach compound matching. The first step was sorting 3 single pictures; subsequent steps gradually changed the task to compound matching. If progress stalled, tasks were modified temporarily to prompt observing behavior. After tabletop training, participants were retested on the compound matching task; accuracy improved to at least 95% for all children. This procedure illustrates one way to improve attending to multiple features of compound stimuli.

The published literature often underrepresents studies that do not find evidence for a treatment effect; this is often called publication bias . Literature reviews that fail to include such studies may overestimate the size of an effect. Only a few studies have examined publication bias in single‐case design ( SCD ) research, but those studies suggest that publication bias may occur. This study surveyed SCD researchers about publication preferences in response to simulated SCD results that show a range of small to large effects. Results suggest that SCD researchers are more likely to submit manuscripts that show large effects for publication and are more likely to recommend acceptance of manuscripts that show large effects when they act as a reviewer. A nontrivial minority of SCD researchers (4% to 15%) would drop 1 or 2 cases from the study if the effect size is small and then submit for publication. This article ends with a discussion of implications for publication practices in SCD research.

A survey of residual analysis in behavior‐analytic research reveals that existing methods are problematic in one way or another. A new test for residual trends is proposed that avoids the problematic features of the existing methods. It entails fitting cubic polynomials to sets of residuals and comparing their effect sizes to those that would be expected if the sets of residuals were random. To this end, sampling distributions of effect sizes for fits of a cubic polynomial to random data were obtained by generating sets of random standardized residuals of various sizes, n . A cubic polynomial was then fitted to each set of residuals and its effect size was calculated. This yielded a sampling distribution of effect sizes for each n . To test for a residual trend in experimental data, the median effect size of cubic‐polynomial fits to sets of experimental residuals can be compared to the median of the corresponding sampling distribution of effect sizes for random residuals using a sign test. An example from the literature, which entailed comparing mathematical and computational models of continuous choice, is used to illustrate the utility of the test.

Transitions with nonhuman animals are typically framed as inescapable changes in signaled reinforcement schedules that result in a pause in responding unique to switches from rich to lean schedules. Pausing is considered to be a function of the aversive qualities of the contrasting reinforcement schedules. Transitions are typically framed in applied research as physical changes in location that evoke problem behavior maintained by the escape of an aversive event or resumption of a preferred event. We attempted to extend the basic framing of transitions to behaviors and contexts of social significance and evaluate a novel treatment for the problem of dawdling by 3 boys who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder during rich‐to‐lean transitions. Dawdling during physical transitions was most readily observed when transitioning to lean contexts in Experiment 1. We then shortened transition duration in Experiment 2 by programming unsignaled and probabilistic rich reinforcement in the upcoming context.

The Cigarette Purchase Task is a behavioral economic assessment tool designed to measure the relative reinforcing efficacy of cigarette smoking across different prices. An exponential demand equation has become a standard model for analyzing purchase task data, but its utility is compromised by its inability to accommodate values of zero consumption. We propose a two‐part mixed effects model that keeps the same exponential demand equation for modeling nonzero consumption values, while providing a logistic regression for the binary outcome of zero versus nonzero consumption. Therefore, the proposed model can accommodate zero consumption values and retain the features of the exponential demand equation at the same time. As a byproduct, the logistic regression component of the proposed model provides a new demand index, the “derived breakpoint”, for the price above which a subject is more likely to be abstinent than to be smoking. We apply the proposed model to data collected at baseline from college students ( N = 1,217) enrolled in a randomized clinical trial utilizing financial incentives to motivate tobacco cessation. Monte Carlo simulations showed that the proposed model provides better fits than an existing model. We note that the proposed methodology is applicable to other purchase task data, for example, drugs of abuse.

Evidence suggests that physical inactivity is prevalent among young children. To combat this, one recommendation for caregivers is to become actively involved in their child's physical activities. However, this general recommendation does not specify how or when a parent should become involved. The purpose of the current study was to conduct a functional analysis to identify a social consequence that would increase the moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity ( MVPA ) exhibited by preschool‐aged children, and then to compare the effects of that social consequence when it was provided contingent on MVPA and when provided independent of MVPA . The results of the functional analyses indicated that 3 of 7 children were most active when attention or interactive play was provided contingent on MVPA . Results of the intervention analysis suggested that caregivers of young children should provide attention or interactive play contingent on MVPA when those consequences are identified as reinforcers in a functional analysis.

Applied to delay discounting data, Area‐Under‐the‐Curve ( AUC ) provides an atheoretical index of the rate of delay discounting. The conventional method of calculating AUC , by summing the areas of the trapezoids formed by successive delay‐indifference point pairings, does not account for the fact that most delay discounting tasks scale delay pseudoexponentially, that is, time intervals between delays typically get larger as delays get longer. This results in a disproportionate contribution of indifference points at long delays to the total AUC , with minimal contribution from indifference points at short delays. We propose two modifications that correct for this imbalance via a base‐10 logarithmic transformation and an ordinal scaling transformation of delays. These newly proposed indices of discounting, AUC log d and AUC or d, address the limitation of AUC while preserving a primary strength (remaining atheoretical). Re‐examination of previously published data provides empirical support for both AUC log d and AUC or d . Thus, we believe theoretical and empirical arguments favor these methods as the preferred atheoretical indices of delay discounting.

Students may engage in high rates of social approach responses at inappropriate times throughout the school day. One intervention that has been used to teach students appropriate and inappropriate times to access attention is a multiple schedule of reinforcement. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of a multiple schedule that indicated when attention was available or not available in a bilingual preschool classroom during small‐group instruction. Results showed that the intervention was effective in bringing students’ social approaches under stimulus control.