On the Distinction Between Open and Closed Economies

Abstract

Open and closed economies have been assumed to produce opposite relations between responding and the programmed density of reward (the amount of reward divided by its cost). Experimental procedures that are treated as open economies typically dissociate responding and total reward by providing supplemental income outside the experimental session; procedures construed as closed economies do not. In an open economy responding is assumed to be directly related to reward density, whereas in a closed economy responding is assumed to be inversely related to reward density. In contrast to this predicted correlation between response-reward relations and type of economy, behavior regulation theory predicts both direct and inverse relations in both open and closed economies. Specifically, responding should be a bitonic function of reward density regardless of the type of economy and is dependent only on the ratio of the schedule terms rather than on their absolute size. These predictions were tested by four experiments in which pigeons' key pecking produced food on fixed-ratio and variable-interval schedules over a range of reward magnitudes and under several open-and closedeconomy procedures. The results better supported the behavior regulation view by showing a general bitonic function between key pecking and food density in all conditions. In most cases, the absolute size of the schedule requirement and the magnitude of reward had no effect; equal ratios of these terms produced approximately equal responding.

Risk allocation and competition in foraging groups: reversed effects of competition if group size varies under risk of predation

“…In foraging theory, animals should stay in bad patches for far less time if they can expect better patches later. In operant psychology experiments, animals should work harder for food in experiments where they feed only during the experiment than in experiments in which they are fed outside the experiment (Timberlake & Peden 1987;Houston & McNamara 1989). In life histories, an organism should invest heavily in reproduction when in a bad environment only if it is stuck there for life.…”

Feeding behavior, obesity, and neuroeconomics

“…In contrast, a closed economy is one in which the commodity and its associated costs are present at all times and the subject procures all of its food under a defined set of market conditions [22][23][24]. In a closed economy, there is usually no explicit motivating operation, and the initiation and termination of meals are dependent variables.…”

The Behavior of Organisms: Purposive Behavior as a Type of Reflex

“…Despite the disappearance of the reflex reserve concept, the strengthening metaphor lived on in the focus on response-reward proximity and frequency, and in the limitations researchers placed on reward density to ensure monotonic functions with performance (Timberlake & Peden, 1987). The influence of the strengthening assumption is nowhere clearer than in Skinner's (1948) analysis of superstitious behavior in the pigeon.…”

“…Many researchers in the operant tradition developed a rule of thumb that assumed a specific form of compensatory theory without testing it: If responding does not decline across a session, then there is no change in the tendency to compensate. Timberlake and Peden (1987) recently argued that this assumption is questionable.…”