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PUNISHMENT OF TEMPORALLY SPACED RESPONDING 1
Author(s) -
Holz W. C.,
Azrin N. H.,
Ulrich R. E.
Publication year - 1963
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.1963.6-115
Subject(s) - punishment (psychology) , reinforcement , psychology , audiology , schedule , animal behavior , value (mathematics) , developmental psychology , mathematics , social psychology , statistics , biology , medicine , computer science , zoology , operating system
The responses of pigeons were maintained by a DRL schedule of food reinforcement. With this schedule, responses were reinforced only when a fixed period of time elapsed without an intervening response. Punishment of all responses reduced the frequency of these responses as a direct function of the punishment intensity. As a consequence of the increased temporal spacing of responses, more reinforcements resulted during punishment. Under progressively higher intensities of punishment, the reinforcement frequency increased to a maximum value and then decreased at the highest intensities. The increased frequency of reinforcement which resulted during punishment did not counteract the suppressive effect of punishment, nor did it lead to a low response rate after punishment was removed. Punishment did not reduce the inter‐response time distribution uniformly, but rather especially reduced the number of short inter‐response times. Even at the low punishment intensities, the number of short inter‐response times was considerably reduced. After punishment was discontinued, performance recovered almost completely after a compensatory burst. The number as well as the temporal pattern of responses returned to normal.