Premium
STIMULUS CONTROL OF DIFFERENTIAL‐REINFORCEMENT‐OF‐LOW‐RATE RESPONDING 1
Author(s) -
Gray Vicky A.
Publication year - 1976
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.1976.25-199
Subject(s) - reinforcement , stimulus (psychology) , stimulus control , differential reinforcement , stimulus generalization , audiology , psychology , schedule , statistics , mathematics , neuroscience , computer science , cognitive psychology , social psychology , medicine , perception , nicotine , operating system
Five pigeons were given single‐stimulus training on an 8‐sec differential‐reinforcement‐of‐low‐rate schedule followed by steady‐state generalization training using 12 wavelength stimuli. Three birds had a high percentage of reinforced responses on the training schedule and flat generalization gradients of total responses. The birds with fewer reinforced responses had much steeper generalization gradients. Generalization gradients plotted as a function of both stimulus wavelength and interresponse time showed that for most birds, stimulus control was restricted to responses with long interresponse times. Responses with very short interresponse times were not under stimulus control and there was some evidence of inhibitory control of short interresponse times. Interresponse‐times‐per‐opportunity functions, plotted as a function of stimulus wavelength, showed that stimulus wavelength controlled the temporal distribution of responses, rather than the overall rate of response. The data indicate that the differential‐reinforcement‐of‐low‐rate schedule generates several response categories that are controlled in different ways by wavelength and time‐correlated stimuli, and that averaging responses regardless of interresponse‐time length obscures this control.