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DISCRIMINABILITY AND SENSITIVITY TO REINFORCER MAGNITUDE IN A DETECTION TASK
Author(s) -
Alsop Brent,
Porritt Melissa
Publication year - 2006
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.2006.91-04
Subject(s) - reinforcement , psychology , magnitude (astronomy) , extant taxon , sensitivity (control systems) , discrimination learning , sample (material) , audiology , developmental psychology , social psychology , medicine , chemistry , physics , chromatography , astronomy , evolutionary biology , electronic engineering , engineering , biology
Three pigeons discriminated between two sample stimuli (intensities of red light). The difficulty of the discrimination was varied over four levels. At each level, the relative reinforcer magnitude for the two correct responses was varied across conditions, and the reinforcer rates were equal. Within levels, discriminability between the sample stimuli did not change systematically as reinforcer magnitude varied. Across levels, the sensitivity of behavior to changes in the reinforcer‐magnitude ratio decreased as the discriminability between the sample stimuli increased. Subsequent analysis showed that this relation was limited to performance following only one of the sample stimuli, the dim red light that remained constant across all conditions. Extant behavioral models of signal detection cannot easily accommodate these results.