Reinforcing the occurrence or nonoccurrence of interim drinking

Reberg, Douglas

doi:10.3758/bf03209739

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 12 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…The operant contingency helped to develop scheduleinduced drinking under environmental conditions (food frequency) that, by themselves, did not induce that much licking, and the degree of contingency established between licking and food delivery determined the level of acquisition of scheduleinduced drinking. The present results are in line with previous demonstrations that schedule-induced drinking can be further increased by giving extra food contingent upon licking (Reberg, 1980) or by increasing its associability (Patterson & Boakes, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Reinforcement of schedule-induced drinking in rats by lick-contingent shortening of food delivery

2016

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Schedule-induced drinking has been a theoretical question of concern ever since it was first described more than 50 years ago. It has been classified as adjunctive behavior; that is, behavior that is induced by an incentive but not reinforced by it. Nevertheless, some authors have argued against this view, claiming that adjunctive drinking is actually a type of operant behavior. If this were true, schedule-induced drinking should be controlled by its consequences, which is the major definition of an operant. The present study tested this hypothesis. In a first experimental phase, a single pellet of food was delivered at regular 90-s intervals, but the interfood interval could be shortened depending on the rat's licking. The degree of contingency between licking the bottle spout and hastening the delivery of the food pellet was 100 %, 50 %, and 0 % for 3 separate groups of animals. Rats that could shorten the interval (100 % and 50 % contingency) drank at a higher rate than those that could not (0 %), and the level of acquisition was positively related to the degree of contingency. In a second phase of the experiment, all groups were exposed to a 100 % contingency, which resulted in all rats developing high levels of schedule-induced drinking. Licking is enhanced if it hastens reinforcement, and can do so at delay characteristics of those present in studies of schedule-induced drinking, thus supporting the view that adjunctive behavior is an operant.Keywords Schedule-induced drinking . Adjunctive vs. operant behavior . Lick-food contingency . Rats Schedule-induced drinking was first described by Falk when he was running an experiment with food-deprived rats on bar pressing under a variable-interval 1-minute food reinforcement schedule in which the animals had continuous access to a bottle of water (Falk, 1961). He observed that rats, despite not being water deprived, consumed large quantities of water (polydipsia) by following the regular pattern of accumulating small quantities after the delivery of each food pellet. As deprivation of food normally leads to a decrease in water intake (e.g., Bolles, 1961), and drinking was not explicitly reinforced, this excessive consumption of water was described by Falk as Babsurd^ (Falk, 1971, p. 577). The main characteristics of schedule-induced drinking are therefore that (a) it takes place after the food pellet has been delivered and (b) in an exaggerated manner. This large consumption of water occurs under an intermittent food schedule and with no apparent reason, as it does not appear to be reinforced during training. Characterization of schedule-induced drinking as an adjunctive behaviorOne of the approaches to explain schedule-induced drinking is to consider this as a phenomenon belonging to a separate category of behavior: adjunctive (Falk, 1971; see a critical analysis by Wetherington, 1982). According to this point of view, adjunctive drinking is induced by the delivery of periodic food but is not reinforced by it (see Baum, 2012, for a recent treatment of ...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Reinforcement of schedule-induced drinking in rats by lick-contingent shortening of food delivery

2016

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“…Schedule-induced or adjunctive behavior therefore shares many characteristics with conventionally defined operant behavior. Reberg (1980) has provided further evidence for this argument by demonstrating that schedule-induced drinking is sensitive to both positive and negative contingencies. Reberg found that drinking increased when licks produced extra food and decreased when extra food was dependent on not licking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Punishment of Schedule‐induced Drinking in Rats by Signaled and Unsignaled Delays in Food Presentation

Pellón

Blackman

1987

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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Food-deprived rats were exposed to a fixed-time 60-s schedule of food-pellet presentation and developed schedule-induced drinking. Using an ABA reversal design, three experiments investigated the effects of events then made dependent on licks. In Experiment 1, lick-dependent signaled delays (1Os) in food presentation in general led to decreased drinking, which recovered when the signaled delays were discontinued. The drinking of yoked-control rats, which received food at the same times as those exposed to the signaled-delay contingency, showed much smaller changes. Experiment 2 showed that 10-s lick-dependent signals alone did not reduce drinking. In Experiment 3, when licks produced unsignaled 10-s delays in food there were less marked and more gradual changes in drinking than in Experiment 1, although these effects again were greater than with yoked-control animals. We concluded that both signaled and unsignaled delays functioned as punishers of drinking. These findings support the view that schedule-induced drinking, like operant behavior, is subject to control by its consequences.

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“…As we detailed in the introduction, ample evidence is now showing that the rate of schedule-induced drinking is sensitive to environmental consequences programmed in relation to the rats' licking, in a way similar to rats' lever pressing being reinforced by food (Bond, Blackman, & Scruton, 1973;Pellón & Blackman, 1987;Reberg, 1980). Furthermore, the variables related to food that have been shown to affect adjunctive behavior also serve to modulate the effects of environmental consequences on licking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response–food delay gradients for lever pressing and schedule-induced licking in rats

Pellón

Pérez-Padilla

2012

Learn Behav

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Eight food-deprived Wistar rats developed stable patterns of lever pressing and licking when exposed to a fixed-time 30-s schedule of food pellet presentation. The rats were trained to lever press by presenting the lever 10 s before the programmed food delivery, with the food pellet being delivered immediately upon a lever press. The operant contingency was then removed and the lever was inserted through the entire interfood interval, being withdrawn with food delivery and reinserted 2 s later. On successive phases of the study, a protective contingency postponed food delivery if responses (lever presses or licks) occurred within the last 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, or 25 s of the interfood interval. Lever pressing was reduced at much shorter response-food delays than those that reduced licking. These results demonstrate that reinforcement contributes to the maintenance of different response patterns on periodic schedules, and that different responses are differentially sensitive to delays.Keywords Lever pressing . Schedule-induced licking . Response-food delays . Control by consequences . Fixed-time food schedule . Rats Schedule-induced behavior is behavior that occurs in excess when reinforcers are programmed intermittently, when there is no explicit contingency arranged between the occurrence of the behavior and the delivery of the reinforcer (for reviews, see Reid & Staddon, 1990;Wetherington, 1982). The first published experimental demonstration of schedule-induced behavior was by Falk (1961), who found that food-deprived but not water-deprived rats consumed unusual and excessive amounts of water concurrently with their execution of operant lever pressing that was intermittently reinforced by food. Falk (1961) termed this behavior "schedule-induced polydipsia," because the drinking was excessive and there was no apparent contingency between the behavior and the delivery of food. Furthermore, Falk (1971) argued that schedule-induced polydipsia was the prototype of a category of behavior that he termed "adjunctive," differentiating it from operant behavior on the basis of being induced rather than controlled by the reinforcement schedule. Clark (1962) disagreed, suggesting that schedule-induced polydipsia results from adventitious reinforcement of licking by food delivery. Staddon (1977) extended and integrated the analysis of adjunctive and operant behavior by suggesting that scheduleinduced behavior could be divided into interim and terminal activities. Such a classification depended on the nature of the behavior and on its temporal location within interfood intervals, with adjunctive behavior being equivalent to interim activity and operant behavior being instances of terminal ac-

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Reinforcing the occurrence or nonoccurrence of interim drinking

Cited by 15 publications

References 12 publications

Reinforcement of schedule-induced drinking in rats by lick-contingent shortening of food delivery

Reinforcement of schedule-induced drinking in rats by lick-contingent shortening of food delivery

Punishment of Schedule‐induced Drinking in Rats by Signaled and Unsignaled Delays in Food Presentation

Response–food delay gradients for lever pressing and schedule-induced licking in rats

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