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...