Williams, B. A. (1997).
Varieties of contrast: A review of Incentive Relativity by Charles F. Flaherty.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
68, 133-141.
The phenomenon of contrast has been studied from two quite
separate perspectives, one derived from the classic studies of
incentive contrast such as Crespi (1942) and the other from the
study of behavioral contrast within behavior analysis. This book
reviews both of these types of contrast effects and finds both
differences and similarities between them. Still at issue is the
validity of the interpretation of contrast that assumes that the
value of some target level of reward is modified in inverse
relation to the level of reward from other sources in the same
context. This concept works well for the classic studies of
incentive contrast, but is challenged by the emerging importance
of anticipatory contrast and the finding in both of the separate
research traditions that anticipatory contrast is inversely
related to other measures of reinforcement value.
Key words: behavioral contrast, incentive contrast,
anticipatorycontrast, psychopharmacology of contrast, relative
rate of reinforcement