| Sumario: | Part of a special section on aging. A study was conducted to examine behavioral momentum, which is the persistence of behavior under altered environmental contingencies, in a sample of older adults. The analysis explored whether changing the operant schedule contingencies has an effect on the responses of older humans to different stimuli when reinforcement density is systematically manipulated. Subjects were 15 older adults who took part in a computer study in which each of two keys in a baseline condition was associated with the same schedule of reinforcement and multiple variable intervals, but one reinforcer was ten times larger than the other. Findings were consistent with the predictions of behavioral momentum. Subjects not only biased their responses in favor of the more densely reinforcing key, they displayed significantly biased responses when contingencies altered. The findings support the conclusion that healthy older adults allocate their behaviors in a manner very sensitive to training stimuli conditions.
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