Premium
FIXED‐INTERVAL PERFORMANCE: THE DYNAMICS OF BEHAVIOR AND THE INTERVAL LENGTH
Author(s) -
Wearden J. H.,
Lowe C. F.
Publication year - 1983
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.1983.39-323
Subject(s) - interval (graph theory) , computer science , dynamics (music) , interval data , artificial intelligence , psychology , mathematics , data mining , combinatorics , pedagogy , measure (data warehouse)
Postreinforcement pauses from successive intervals under various fixed‐interval schedules (ranging from 15 seconds to 480 seconds in length) were subjected to lag‐1 autocorrelation analysis. Results from both rats and pigeons suggested that there was a consistent tendency for pause values in successive intervals to be weakly positively related. This tendency did not appear to change systematically with interval length and was exhibited both when the reinforcer magnitude was constant and when it was variable at different interval values. The findings do not support suggestions that the dynamic properties of performance under fixed‐interval schedules vary systematically with interval length, and are in the opposite direction from some previous findings suggesting that measures of behavior (such as post‐reinforcement pause length or number of responses) in successive intervals are inversely related.