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WITHIN‐SESSION RESPONSE PATTERNS ON CONJOINT VARIABLE‐INTERVAL VARIABLE‐TIME SCHEDULES
Author(s) -
Weatherly Jeffrey N.,
McSweeney Frances K.,
Swindell Samantha
Publication year - 1996
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.1996.66-205
Subject(s) - reinforcement , psychology , session (web analytics) , habituation , schedule , stimulus (psychology) , lever , stimulus control , operant conditioning , developmental psychology , audiology , social psychology , cognitive psychology , computer science , neuroscience , medicine , physics , quantum mechanics , operating system , world wide web , nicotine
Operant responding often changes within sessions, even when factors such as rate of reinforcement remain constant. The present study was designed to determine whether within‐session response patterns are determined by the total number of reinforcers delivered during the session or only by the reinforcers earned by the operant response. Four rats pressed a lever and 3 pigeons pecked a key for food reinforcers delivered by a conjoint variable‐interval variable‐time schedule. The overall rate of reinforcement of the conjoint schedule varied across conditions from 15 to 480 reinforcers per hour. When fewer than 120 reinforcers were delivered per hour, the within‐session patterns of responding on conjoint schedules were similar to those previously observed when subjects received the same total number of reinforcers by responding on simple variable‐interval schedules. Response patterns were less similar to those observed on simple variable‐interval schedules when the overall rate of reinforcement exceeded 120 reinforcers per hour. These results suggest that response‐independent reinforcers can affect the within‐session pattern of responding on a response‐dependent schedule. The results are incompatible with a response‐based explanation of within‐session changes in responding (e.g., fatigue), but are consistent with both reinforcer‐based (e.g., satiation) and stimulus‐based (e.g., habituation) explanations.