Periodic water, interwater interval, and adjunctive behavior in a 24-hour multiresponse environment

Abstract

To examine the generality of the interreward response effects shown by rats under periodic food delivery, we presented .10 ml of water at minimum interwater intervals that ranged from 8 to 512 sec. Use of a 24-h multiresponse environment allowed evaluation of interdrink responses with respect to their excessiveness, patterning, and functional relationship to the interwater interval. In contrast to the extensive activity-inducing effects of periodic food, the only major excitatory effect of periodic water was increased attention to the water source. Although there were a few bitonic and direct relationships between interwater interval and changes in responding, the great majority of functions were inverse or inconsistent. Further, unlike the increase in drinking under periodic food, total eating decreased under periodic water. The major similarity with food reward was the apparent separation of interreward behavior into three general classes of reward-appropriate foraging responses: area-restricted search after reward, more general search (and waiting), and focal search preceding the next reward delivery.Thirty years after Falk (1961) called attention to interreward adjunctive behavior in the form of excessive postpellet drinking under periodic food delivery, the characteristics and causation of such behavior remain controversial (Reid & Staddon, 1986;Riley & Wetherington, 1989;Roper, 1981;Wetherington, 1982). Among the points of contention are the following: to what extent adjunctive responses are excessive, whether the relationship between adjunctive responding and reward frequency is direct or bitonic (Reid, Vazquez, & Rico, 1985), the number and nature of classes of adjunctive behavior, and whether adjunctive responding is similar under both food and water rewards (Rachlin & Krasnoff, 1983;Reid et al., 1985;Wetherington & Riley, 1985). This paper examines how these issues apply to a wide variety of interreward responses in a 24-h environment.A major difficulty with the assessment of adjunctive behavior has been the lack of a precise definition of excessiveness. Despite extensive debate, there is continued disagreement over the proper comparison condition (see Falk, 1971;Roper, 1981;Staddon, 1977;Timberlake, 1982). Another difficulty is the nature of the relationship between reward frequency and adjunctive responding. Although a bitonic relationship between reward frequency and total adjunctive responding is well supported (e.g, Falk, 1969Falk, , 1971Falk, ,1977Wetherington, 1982), recent investigators have focused on a direct relationship between reThis research was supported by NIMH Grant MH37892. The authors wish to thankHillary Case for her extensive help with data analysis and Andy Delamater for his comments. Correspondence should be addressed to William Timberlake, Psychology Department, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. ward frequency and the interreward rate of responding (i.e., response rate is highest at the shortest interreward intervals-see Killeen, Hanson, & Osborne, 1978;Staddon, 1977...

Acquisition of schedule-induced polydipsia by rats in proximity to upcoming food delivery

“…Timberlake (1990) proposed three kinds of interingestion responses related to cycles of foraging: postreward search, general search and wait, and prereward search. Drinking at the end of the interfood interval might be due to the high level of activity produced by the motivational state of the prereward search (Reid, Piñones Vazquez, & Alatorre Rico, 1985;Timberlake & Lucas, 1991). Alternative explanations for the excessive nature of the behavior rely on the displayed activities that occur in conflictive or highly motivating situations, such as those involving the withdrawal of food from hungry animals (Falk & Kupfer, 1998).…”

Behavior systems, associationism, and Pavlovian conditioning

“…Accidental pairings of periodic reward with a response generated a positive feedback loop between the probability of responding and the probability of reward. The first difficulty with this clever explanation was that, in longer interfood intervals, responses such as drinking or attacking a conspecific emerged following rather than preceding food (Falk, 1971;Staddon, 1977;Timberlake & Lucas, 1991). The second difficulty was that behavior in short interfood intervals appeared too similar to be generated by accidental pairings.…”

Caixa de atividades diárias para ratos

“…A partir do trabalho de Costa (2010), foi construído um novo protótipo de caixa de condicionamento operante para ratos em que múltiplos operantes podem ser registrados (para outras caixas experimentais similares, ver também Lucas, Timberlake & Gawley, 1988;Lyons & Cheney,1984;Mcintire, Lundervold, Calmes, Jones & Allard, 1983;Mellgren, 1982;Sales, 2006;Timberlake & Lucas, 1991).…”