Schedule induction and the temporal distributions of adjunctive behavior on periodic water schedules

Autor: Patricia Vázquez, Javier Alatorre Rico, Alliston K. Reid
Rok vydání: 1985
Předmět:
Zdroj: Animal Learning & Behavior. 13:321-326
ISSN: 1532-5830
0090-4996
DOI: 10.3758/bf03200027
Popis: The ability of periodic water reinforcement schedules to induce or entrain activities was investigated by having observers classify mutually exclusive and exhaustive activities of 10 rats placed in a rich environment with various fixed-time schedules of water delivery. For each activity measured, three characteristics of induced behavior were examined: (1) its excessiveness; (2) the commonly observed inverted-U relation between rate of induced behavior and rate of reinforcement; and (3) the observation that induced activities occur earlier in interreinforcement intervals than do facultative activities, producing multimodal activity distributions. All activities were demonstrated to be noninduced, facultative activities, and none could be classified as schedule-induced behavior by any of the three criteria. The factors that determine the temporal distributions of all activities appeared to be equivalent to the factors that determine the distributions of scheduleinduced activities in situations in which only the induced activities are available. Staddon's (1977b) model of schedule-induced behavior identifies three categories of behavior that occur on periodic reward schedules: terminal activities, which occur in the presence of stimuli correlated with reward delivery and are directed toward the acquisition of the reward; interim activities, which occur at elevated levels in the presence of stimuli correlated with low probability of reward delivery; and facultative activities, which are not induced, show an inverse relation with reward frequency (Riley, Wetherington, Delamater, Peele, & Dacanay, 1985), and usually occur near the middle of interreinforcement intervals and always after interim activities (when interim activities are also observed in the interval). Staddon's distinction between interim behavior and facultative behavior was made to emphasize that although both activity classes might occur within the same interreinforcement interval, only the interim activities are schedule induced, that is, excessive relative to massedreward baseline sessions due to some, as yet undetermined, property of the schedule itself (Staddon, personal communication, 1985). Although facultative activities are not excessive (by definition), their temporal distributions within the interreward intervals are important indicators
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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