Variability, constraints, and creativity: Shedding light on Claude Monet.

Based on seemingly overwhelming empirical evidence of the decremental effects of reward on intrinsic task interest and creativity, the use of reward to alter human behavior has been challenged in literature reviews, textbooks, and the popular media. An analysis of a quarter century of research on intrinsic task interest and creativity revealed, however, that (a) detrimental effects of reward occur under highly restricted, easily avoidable conditions; (b) mechanisms of instrumental and classical conditioning are basic for understanding incremental and decremental effects of reward on task motivation; and (c) positive effects of reward on generalized creativity are easily attainable using procedures derived from behavior theory.

Two rough-toothed porpoises (Steno bredanensis) were individually trained to emit novel responses, which were not developed by shaping and which were not previously known to occur in the species, by reinforcing a different response to the same set of stimuli in each of a series of training sessions. A technique was developed for transcribing a complex series of behaviors on to a single cumulative record so that the training sessions of the second animal could be fully recorded. Cumulative records are presented for a session in which the criterion that only novel behaviors would be reinforced was abruptly met with four new types of responses, and for typical preceding and subsequent sessions. Some analogous techniques in the training of pigeons, horses, and humans are discussed.

Contingencies of selection, be they phylogenetic or ontogenetic, merely set boundaries on units; they do not provide blueprints. Thus, variability is fundamental to all products of selection. Skinner, by characterizing the units of analysis in behavior as generic in nature, established his science squarely within the selectionist paradigm, thereby avoiding the tendency, common throughout psychology, to slip into essentialist analyses. The distinction between essentialism and selectionism is refined in this article, and prominent examples of essentialism in linguistics, theories of memory, theories of representation, associationism, and even in behavior analysis are identified. Recent trends in cognitive science--specifically, research on adaptive networks--is amenable to a selectionist interpretation, suggesting the possibility of future fruitful interactions with behavior analysis.