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INDEPENDENCE OF SENSITIVITY TO RELATIVE REINFORCEMENT RATE AND DISCRIMINABILITY IN SIGNAL DETECTION
Author(s) -
McCarthy Dianne,
Davison Michael
Publication year - 1980
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.1980.34-273
Subject(s) - reinforcement , stimulus (psychology) , detection theory , psychology , response bias , peck (imperial) , statistics , audiology , artificial intelligence , computer science , mathematics , social psychology , cognitive psychology , detector , telecommunications , medicine , geometry
Six pigeons were trained to detect differences between two white stimuli, S 1 and S 2 differing in duration and arranged probabilistically on the center key of a three‐key chamber. Detection performance was measured at two levels of discriminability. At one level, S 1 was five seconds and S 2 was thirty seconds. At the other level, S 1 was twenty seconds and S 2 was thirty seconds. The procedure was a standard signal‐detection yes‐no design in which stimulus‐presentation probability was varied from .1 to .9 at both discriminability levels. On completion of the center‐key stimulus, a peck on the center key darkened the center‐key light and turned on the two red side keys. A left‐key response was “correct” on S 1 trials, and a right‐key response was “correct” on S 2 trials. Correct responses produced food reinforcement on a variable‐ratio 1.3 schedule. Incorrect responses produced three second blackout. Discriminability was higher for the five‐second versus thirty‐second conditions than for the twenty‐second versus thirty‐second conditions, but there were no differences in sensitivity of behavior to reinforcement variation for the two stimulus pairs. Response bias was a function of the relative reinforcement rate for correct choice responses.