CONTRAST, INDUCTION, FACILITATION, SUPPRESSION, AND CONSERVATION¹

Abstract

Ten rats received all of their water in daily 1-hr sessions. Following a baseline phase in which lever and water spout were freely available throughout each session, subjects were trained to press the lever for water on mixed schedules composed of two alternating components. Each component gave access to water for a fixed cumulation of drinking time every time the rat cumulated a fixed amount of lever-pressing time. Changes in one component produced contrast and induction effects, both positive and negative, with respect to both lever pressing and drinking in the unchanged component. All schedules facilitated lever pressing relative to baseline. All schedules suppressed drinking relative to baseline, even though contingency sessions allowed ample time to perform the baseline amount of drinking. The entire pattern of results was predicted in quantitative detail by assuming that the total amount of a dimension apportioned to lever pressing and drinking is conserved between baseline and contingency sessions. Conservation theory was shown to predict several effects produced by simple fixed-ratio schedules, and was compared favorably with probability-differential (Premack, 1971) and response-deprivation (Timberlake and Allison, 1974) theory.

Detrimental effects of reward: Reality or myth?

“…77-78) argued that organisms may have an innate or acquired motive to control the environment. Some behavioral theories of motivation assume that organisms are motivated to maintain all of their behaviors at preferred levels and that deviations from preferred performance are aversive (Allison, 1976;Hanson & Timberlake, 1983;Timberlake & Allison, 1974).Fundamental to behaviorism is the utilitarian view of human nature, favored by the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1781Bentham ( / 1988, which holds that behavior is strengthened by positive consequences. Behaviorists emphasize the evolutionary continuity of instrumental-and classical-conditioning processes and maintain that the principles of behavior found with animals have relevance for human activities (Domjan, 1987; Overmier & Burke, 1992).…”

Licking one saccharin solution for access to another in rats: Contingent and noncontingent effects in instrumental performance

“…There has been much recent interest in using measures of responding in baseline sessions to predict performance under an instrumental contingency (Allison, 1976;Dunham, 1977;Mazur, 1975;Rachlin & Burkhard, 1978;Staddon, 1979;. In a typical study, the paired baseline of two responses is measured during sessions of fixed length when both responses are freely and simultaneously available.…”

“…In a paired baseline, there may be considerable competition for expression, either because the responses are highly probable and independent (Dunham, 1972) or because the responses are so similar that one substitutes for the other (Jacobson & Premack, 1970;Young & Greene, 1953). Under a typical schedule, there is less competition than in the paired baseline because the amount of contingent responding is reduced (Allison, 1976). Thus, the apparent contingent increase in instrumental responding may be inflated because of the effect of decreased competition with the contingent response.…”

“…Whether these differences can be resolved in some comprehensive model of operant and economic behavior remains to be seen. Allison (1976) to account for the total change in instrumental responding from paired baseline to schedule condition. In Allison's model, the multiplicative constant is estimated from the schedule data rather than from single or paired baselines.…”

Polydipsia and autoshaping: Drinking and leverpressing as substitutes for eating

“…As a wellspring of theoretical speculation, polydipsia rivals another example of excessive responding, called "autoshaping" (Brown & Jenkins, 1968; Schwartz & Gamzu, 1977)or "sign tracking" (Hearst & Jenkins, 1974), studied mainly in pigeons, but also seen in rats. If we replace the water tube with a retractable lever and present the lever a few seconds before each delivery of food, the rat may press the lever much more than it would ordinarily, even though the delivery of food does not depend on pressing the lever Peterson, Ackil, Frommer, & Hearst, 1972).Conservation theory has seen some success in accounting for instrumental performance under a wide variety of response-contingent schedules (Allison, 1976(Allison, , 1980(Allison, , 1981bAllison, Miller, & Wozny, 1979;Shapiro & Allison, 1978).This paper shows how conservation theory may also account for two kinds of excessive responding under noncontingent arrangements, schedule-induced polydipsia and autoshaped leverpressing. Experiment 1 tests a conservation…”