Reinforcement occurs in operant or instrumental conditioning and is defined as a strengthening of a specific behaviour due to its association with a stimulus. A reinforcer is the stimulus that strengthens the behaviour. This is in contrast to punishment where a behaviour is weakened. In a message dated 4/27/2013 8:33:12 A.M. UTC-02, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: I am both saying it and implying it.> Hm. This "both" may be untrue as a matter of the synthetic a priori... Glad you noted it. I would think it's actually analytically oxymoronic (or not, of course). Grice's first example of the 'conversational implicature' is: A: I've run out of gas. B: There's a garage around the corner. Grice explains: "B would be infringing [the rational constraints on conversation] unless he thinks, or thinks it possible, that the garage is OPEN, and indeed, on top of that, that, as a good open garage, it has some gas to sell. So, in my favoured terminology, I would be ready to allow the connection by saying that B is _implicating_ that the garage is,or at least MAY be open, and with some gas to sell." On the other hand (usually not the right one), O. K, in another scenario suggests: "I am both saying and implying [that p]." Indeed, it is almost impossible to conceive of a realistic scenario for this. For, if we allow the IMPLICATED material to get explicated, alla: "There is a[n +> open] garage [+> with gas to sell] around the corner" he would be EXPLICATING the stuff, not IMPLICATING it. In other words, implicature cannot get reinfornced _as easily_ as that. The only way to reinforce an implicature is with a further implicature. This Felton refers to as a meta-implicature (of sorts). Cheers, Speranza --- Brechner, K.C. (1974) An experimental analysis of social traps. PhD Dissertation, Arizona State University. Brechner, K.C. (1977). An experimental analysis of social traps. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 552–64. Brechner, K.C. (1987) Social Traps, Individual Traps, and Theory in Social Psychology. Pasadena, CA: Time River Laboratory, Bulletin No. 870001. Brechner, K.C. (2003) Superimposed schedules applied to rent control. Economic and Game Theory, 2/28/03, [1]. Brechner, K.C. (2010) A social trap analysis of the Los Angeles County storm drain system: A rational for interventions. Paper presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, San Diego. Brechner, K.C. & Linder, D.E. (1981), A social trap analysis of energy distribution systems, in Advances in Environmental Psychology, Vol. 3, Baum, A. & Singer, JE, eds. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates. Chance, Paul. (2003) Learning and Behavior. 5th edition Toronto: Thomson-Wadsworth. Dinsmoor, James A. (2004) "The etymology of basic concepts in the experimental analysis of behavior". Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 82(3): 311–6. Ferster, C.B. & Skinner, B.F. (1957). Schedules of reinforcement. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. ISBN 0-13-792309-0. Lewin, K. (1935) A dynamic theory of personality: Selected papers. New York: McGraw-Hill. Michael, Jack. (1975) "Positive and negative reinforcement, a distinction that is no longer necessary; or a better way to talk about bad things". Behaviorism, 3(1): 33–44. Skinner, B.F. (1938). The behavior of organisms. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Skinner, B.F. (1956). A case history in scientific method. American Psychologist, 11, 221–33. Zeiler, M.D. (1968) Fixed and variable schedules of response-independent reinforcement. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 11, 405–14. Glossary of reinforcement terms at the University of Iowa ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html