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CHANGES IN FUNCTIONAL RESPONSE UNITS WITH BRIEFLY DELAYED REINFORCEMENT
Author(s) -
Arbuckle Jeffery L.,
Lattal Ken A.
Publication year - 1988
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.1988.49-249
Subject(s) - reinforcement , peck (imperial) , psychology , duration (music) , schedule , computer science , social psychology , mathematics , acoustics , physics , geometry , operating system
In two experiments, key‐peck responding of pigeons was compared under variable‐interval schedules that arranged immediate reinforcement and ones that arranged unsignaled delays of reinforcement. Responses during the nominal unsignaled delay periods had no effect on the reinforcer presentations. In Experiment 1, the unsignaled delays were studied using variable‐interval schedules as baselines. Relative to the immediate reinforcement condition, 0.5‐s unsignaled delays decreased the duration of the reinforced interresponse times and increased the overall frequency of short (<0.5‐s) interresponse times. Longer, 5.0‐s unsignaled delays increased the duration of the reinforced interresponse times and decreased the overall frequency of the short interresponse times. In Experiment 2, similar effects to those of Experiment 1 were obtained when the 0.5‐s unsignaled delays were imposed upon a baseline schedule that explicitly arranged reinforcement of short interresponse times and therefore already generated a large number of short interresponse times. The results support earlier suggestions that the unsignaled 0.5‐s delays change the functional response unit from a single key peck to a multiple key‐peck unit. These findings are discussed in terms of the mechanisms by which contingencies control response structure in the absence of specific structural requirements.