SIGNAL‐DETECTION ANALYSES OF CONDITIONAL DISCRIMINATION AND DELAYED MATCHING‐TO‐SAMPLE PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Quantitative analyses of stimulus control and reinforcer control in conditional discriminations and delayed matching‐to‐sample procedures often encounter a problem; it is not clear how to analyze data when subjects have not made errors. The present article examines two common methods for overcoming this problem. Monte Carlo simulations of performance demonstrated that both methods introduced systematic deviations into the results, and that there were genuine risks of drawing misleading conclusions concerning behavioral models of signal detection and animal short‐term memory.