The Effect of the Size of the Test Environment on Behavior Under Two Temporally Defined Schedules

Skuban, William E.; Richardson, Will

doi:10.1901/jeab.1975.23-271

Cited by 21 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Maintained responding showed little influence on the restrainer with the exception of short ITI values where stable keydirected responding may not be reliably observed in unrestrained subjects. In previous work somewhat higher response rates have been observed for restrained as compared to unrestrained subjects in differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) schedules (Richardson & Loughead, 1974;Skuban & Richardson, 1975). Of course higher rates in this procedure generally covary with lower rates of reinforcement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Physical Restraint Produces Rapid Acquisition of the Pigeon's Key Peck

Locurto¹,

Travers²,

Terrace³

et al. 1980

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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The acquisition and maintenance of autoshaped key pecking in pigeons was studied as a function of intertrial interval. At each of six intervals, which ranged from 12 seconds to 384 seconds, four pigeons were physically restrained during training while four other pigeons were not restrained. Restrained subjects acquired key pecking faster and with less intragroup variability at each interval. The effects of restraint were specific to acquisition and were not evident in maintained responding after five postacquisition sessions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Physical Restraint Produces Rapid Acquisition of the Pigeon's Key Peck

Locurto¹,

Travers²,

Terrace³

et al. 1980

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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“…In contrast to Staddon and Simmelhag (1971) and Staddon and Ayres (1975) Finally, the present experiment confounded activity and distance from the lever, and chamber size is related to performance with DRL schedules (Skuban & Richardson, 1975 …”

Section: Collateral Activities-sequential Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…) will be affected by the nature of the stimuli correlated with food presentation (Timberlake, Wahl, & King, 1982), there is little evidence that any schedule-induced activity, except drinking, has been raised above its operant level (Roper, 1981). Moreover, schedule-induced drinking may be amenable to an interpretation based on normal reinforcement mechanisms (Keehn & Riusech, 1979 (Skuban & Richardson, 1975) or providing stimuli for collateral activities may both serve a common function. Second, collateral activities assume no special status as a response class with regard to the operant.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal Control in a Complex Environment: An Analysis of Schedule‐related Behavior

McIntire

Lundervold

Calmes

et al. 1983

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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Three experiments conducted in an automated ten-compartment chamber recorded collateral activities of rats reinforced for lever pressing on differential-reinforcement-of-lowrate schedules. In Experiment 1, the rate of lever pressing increased when stimulus support for collateral activities was removed, thus confirming earlier findings. However, there were no temporal or sequential patterns of collateral activities that predicted operant responding.In Experiment 2, the rate of lever pressing increased only if (a) access to all stimulus support for collateral activities was simultaneously prevented, and (b) the rat was forced to remain in the presence of the lever and food tray. The availability of any of the stimuli related to collateral activity was sufficient to keep lever-pressing rates from increasing. Experiment 3 examined collateral activities under a signaled differential-reinforcementof-low-rate schedule. Preventing access to stimuli supporting collateral activities had little effect on stable lever pressing when the signal was maintained. When the signal was removed, collateral activities continued, but lever-pressing rates increased in three of the four rats and rates of food presentation declined in all rats. Hypotheses that collateral activities have (a) a timekeeping or discriminative function, or (b) directly inhibit operant responding were not supported. The results suggest that collateral activities may facilitate operant responding by simply removing the subject from the presence of reinforcementrelated stimuli.Key words: DRL, fixed-time, collateral, lever press, competition, concurrent, ratsExperimental manipulation of collateral activities affects the rate of operant responding under the control of differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) schedules. Preventing the occurrence of established collateral activities increases the rate of operant responding, and providing stimuli for the occurrence of collateral activities generally reduces the rate of operant responding.There are four hypotheses regarding the inverse relationship between collateral activities and operant responding. First, collateral activities serve as the timekeeping mechanism and become discriminative for the operant response (e.g

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“…The complementary observation has also been made. Several investigators have shown that when collateral responses are restricted to the area just surrounding the operandum, DRL efficiency has decreased (Glazer & Singh, 1971;Richardson & Loughead, 1974;Skuban & Richardson, 1975).…”

Section: Stereotypy and Heterogeneity Of Collateral Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

A functional analysis of collateral behavior under differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate schedules

Hemmes

Eckerman

Rubinsky

1979

Animal Learning & Behavior

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The collateralbehaviorof pigeonsunder differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) schedules was evaluated for its role in controlling DRL performance. Two of three pigeons engaged in high rates of collateral keypecking under schedules up to DRL 28 sec. Rate of collateral pecking was positively correlated with DRL efficiency. Topographical features of the collateral behavior were inconsistent with the notion that collateral behavior mediates DRL performance through response·produced stimuli. Rather, the collateral behavior appeared to interfere with the operant response, delaying it long enough to meet the DRL requirement. 328When human and nonhuman subjects are exposed to schedules of reinforcement which require temporal spacing of responses, they frequently develop nonrandom patterns of collateral behavior between occurrences of the operant response. Though these collateral behaviors may merely be induced and functionally insignificant, the topographical and temporal stereotypy of these patterns has lead to speculation that they are functional in determining the temporal spacing of the operants. Such speculation is encouraged by studies which demonstrate that decrements in performance occur under differential-reinforcement-of-Iow-rate (DRL) schedules when subjects are prevented from engaging in collateral behavior (Laties, Weiss, & Weiss, 1969;Richardson & Loughead, 1974;Schwartz & Williams, 1971). A parsimonious interpretation of these observations is that collateral behaviors facilitate DRL performance by interfering with and thereby delaying the operant response (Schwartz & Williams, 1971). Laties et al. (1969), however, argued for a stronger interpretation, suggesting that collateral behaviors could be described as a discriminated chain of responding in which each response serves as a discriminative stimulus for the following response. In this way, the subject's own behaviors serve as a "clock," indicating the time for the operant.Although neither of these interpretations of collateral behavior has been formalized, several means of discriminating between them seem reasonable. Specifically, we shall argue that support for mediation will be demonstrated when: (1) the precision of timing under DRL schedules is functionally related to properties of the collateral behavior; (2) the collateral behavior is highly stereotyped and deviations from the stereotyped pattern lead to nonreinforcement; and (3) the sequences of collateral behavior are heterogeneous, thereby providing a set of discriminable stimuli to be used for mediation.If mediation is not supported in these ways, then we shall argue that the functional significance of collateral behavior may be related to its ability to interfere with the operant response. One prediction of this interference hypothesis is that the degree of incompatibility between the collateral and operant behaviors should be positively related to DRL efficiency.The preceding arguments were tested in an experiment in which the location and sequential patterns of collateral and operant ...

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The Effect of the Size of the Test Environment on Behavior Under Two Temporally Defined Schedules

Cited by 21 publications

References 8 publications

Physical Restraint Produces Rapid Acquisition of the Pigeon's Key Peck

Physical Restraint Produces Rapid Acquisition of the Pigeon's Key Peck

Temporal Control in a Complex Environment: An Analysis of Schedule‐related Behavior

A functional analysis of collateral behavior under differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate schedules

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