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CHOICE, EXPERIENCE, AND THE GENERALIZED MATCHING LAW
Author(s) -
Todorov João Claudio,
Castro Jorge Mendes de Oliveira,
Hanna Elenice Seixas,
Sa Maria Cristieves Bittencourt de,
Barreto Marcio de Queiroz
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.1983.40-99
Subject(s) - matching law , matching (statistics) , session (web analytics) , statistics , exponent , mathematics , interval (graph theory) , variable (mathematics) , psychology , computer science , combinatorics , mathematical analysis , linguistics , philosophy , world wide web
Five pigeons were exposed to different pairs of concurrent variable‐interval, variable‐interval schedules on nine experimental conditions of 30 sessions each. For every session, the parameters of the generalized matching equation were computed for the first five, six, seven, eight, and nine experimental conditions. The exponent a , both for response and time distribution, tended to decrease with increases in number of experimental conditions and to increase with number of sessions per condition, but values of k (bias) varied unsystematically. When the subjects were exposed to five new pairs of schedules, with 55 sessions per condition, the findings were confirmed. Data from the literature on the generalized matching law suggest that the variability of exponent values may be explained in part by the use of naive or experienced subjects in different investigations and by the variability in number of experimental conditions and in number of sessions per condition.