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EFFECTS OF QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT REINFORCERS ON THE PARAMETERS OF THE RESPONSE‐STRENGTH EQUATION
Author(s) -
Petry Nancy M.,
Heyman Gene M.
Publication year - 1994
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.1994.61-97
Subject(s) - reinforcement , matching law , psychology , differential reinforcement , function (biology) , statistics , developmental psychology , mathematics , social psychology , evolutionary biology , biology
This experiment examined the relationship between two qualitatively different reinforcers and the parameters of a quantitative model of reinforced responding, referred to as the response‐strength equation or the Herrnstein equation. A group of rats was first food deprived and later water deprived. An 11.5% sucrose solution served as the reinforcer in the food‐deprivation condition, and water was the reinforcer in the water‐deprivation condition. Each experimental session consisted of a series of seven variable‐interval schedules, providing reinforcement rates that varied between 20 and 1,200 reinforcers per hour. The response rates increased in a negatively accelerating function in a manner consistent with the response‐strength equation. This equation has two fitted parameters, k and R e . According to one theory, the k parameter is a measure of motor performance, and R e is indicative of the relative reinforcement efficacy of the background uncontrollable sources of reinforcement in relation to the experimentally arranged reinforcer. In this study, k did not change as a result of the different reinforcers, but R e was significantly larger in the sucrose‐reinforcement condition. These results are consistent with the interpretation that k and R e measure two independent and experimentally distinguishable parameters and provide further evidence that absolute response rate is a function of relative reinforcement rate, as implied by the derivation of the response‐strength equation based on the matching law.