Temporal Control by Progressive‐interval Schedules of Reinforcement

Leinenweber, Antoinette; Nietzel, Shannon M.; Baron, Alan

doi:10.1901/jeab.1996.66-311

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The data intersect the y -axis at 2 s, and increase thereafter with a slope of m = 0.51, indicating that these pigeons tended to pause for half the length of the prior IRI. Such linear pausing is consistent with research on progressive interval, fixed ratio, cyclic ratio, fixed interval, cyclic interval and response-initiated delay schedules (Bizo & Killeen, 1997; Capehart, Eckerman, Guilkey, & Shull, 1980; Hanson & Killeen, 1981; Leinenweber, Nietzel, & Baron, 1996; Leslie, Boyle, & Shaw, 2000; Schneider, 1969; Wynne, Staddon, & Delius, 1996). The reason for this invariance is uncertain, but the simple model of Capehart and associates has some face validity.…”

Section: Experiments 3: a Basis-6 Pr Schedulesupporting

confidence: 86%

Progressive ratio schedules of reinforcement.

Killeen¹,

Posadas-Sánchez²,

Johansen³

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Pigeons' pecks produced grain under progressive ratio (PR) schedules, whose response requirements increased systematically within sessions. Experiment 1 compared arithmetic (AP) and geometric (GP) progressions. Response rates increased as a function of the component ratio requirement, then decreased linearly (AP) or asymptotically (GP). Experiment 2 found the linear decrease in AP rates to be relatively independent of step size. Experiment 3 showed pausing to be controlled by the prior component length, which predicted the differences between PR and regressive ratio schedules found in Experiment 4. When the longest component ratios were signaled by different key colors, rates at moderate ratios increased, demonstrating control by forthcoming context. Models for response rate and pause duration described performance on AP schedules; GP schedules required an additional parameter representing the contextual reinforcement. Keywordscontext; fixed ratio; mathematical model; post-reinforcement pause; progressive ratio; reinforcement schedules One of B. F. Skinner's bequests was his emphasis on the singular importance of the schedule of reinforcement, the contingencies that the experimenter or environment arranges for the presentation of events to an organism. The events could be biologically significant or insignificant, positive or negative. Nature, not Skinner, was the first to arrange reinforcement schedules, and many scientists-Pavlov and Thorndike the exemplars-used them to good effect before Skinner. But Skinner, along with his students (e.g., Ferster & Skinner, 1957) made them an end, not means, of inquiry. One of the most fundamental type of schedule arranges reinforcement contingent upon the completion of a fixed number of responses, the Fixed Ratio (FR) schedule. If the ratio is not fixed, but varies widely from one reinforcer to the next, the schedule is called Variable Ratio (VR). Ratio schedules engender high rates of responding, more or less uniform under VR, consisting of a post-reinforcement pause or break followed by a run of high rate responding under FR.It is possible to schedule ratio reinforcement intermediate between these extremes of variability. Under Progressive Ratio (PR) schedules the requirements for reinforcement are increased systematically, usually after each reinforcer. Since their introduction by Hodos (1961), PR schedules have been used increasingly to assess reinforcement strength, an assay of special importance to behavioral pharmacologists (e.g., Ping-Teng, Lee, Konz, Richardson, Correspond with: Peter Killeen, Department of Psychology, Box 871104, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104, Killeen@asu.edu, FAX: (480) Voice: (480) 967-0560. Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors discl...

show abstract

Section: Experiments 3: a Basis-6 Pr Schedulesupporting

confidence: 86%

Progressive ratio schedules of reinforcement.

Killeen¹,

Posadas-Sánchez²,

Johansen³

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…By contrast, in true PI schedules, each IRI is mathematically related to the previous one. Despite the differences between the present yoked-interval progressions and PI progressions defined by either arithmetic or geometric progressions (e.g., Dougherty, Cherek, & Roache, 1994;Harzem, 1969;Leinenweber, Nietzel, & Baron, 1996), the present behavioral effects of the yoked-interval schedule were similar in that response rates decreased and PRPs increased as the sessions, and thus the IRIs, progressed. Comparisons of the cumulative records in the present Figures 2 and 5 to those presented by Leinenweber et al, however, indicate that PI schedule response patterns were more positively accelerated and the response patterns under the present yoked-interval schedules were more linear.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 50%

Response Persistence Under Ratio and Interval Reinforcement Schedules

Lattal

Reilly

Kohn

1998

J Exper Analysis Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In Experiment 1, rats were exposed to progressive‐ratio schedules of food reinforcement while other rats were exposed simultaneously to yoked‐interval schedules that arranged equivalent interreinforcer intervals but required only a single response at the end of the interval for food delivery. In Experiment 2, a within‐subject yoked‐control procedure was employed in which pigeons were exposed to alternating sessions (one per day) of progressive‐ratio schedules and yoked‐interval schedules as described above. In both experiments, responding under the yoked‐interval schedule persisted beyond the point at which responding under the progressive‐ratio schedule had ceased. The progressive‐ratio schedules controlled break‐and‐run distributions, and the yoked‐interval schedules controlled more even distributions of responses in time. Response rates decreased and postreinforcement pauses increased over time within individual sessions under both schedules. The results suggest that responding maintained by interval schedules is more persistent than that maintained by ratio schedules. The limitations and implications of this conclusion are discussed in the context of other investigations of response strength and behavioral momentum.

show abstract

“…Most studies of the effect of interval schedules of reinforcement have used a constant expected value (Catania & Reynolds, 1968) in which tracking could not be observed, but procedures in which the expected value changes in an orderly way have produced temporal tracking. This has been shown in progressive-interval schedules, in which each interval from food to the next available food in a session is longer than the previous one (Harzem, 1969;Leinenweber, Nietzel, & Baron, 1996), cyclical-interval schedules, in which each interval from food to the next available food gradually increases and then decreases throughout a session (Innis, 1981;Innis & Staddon, 1970, 1971Staddon, 1964;, and cyclical, response-initiated delay schedules, in which the interval from the first response after food until the next food gradually increases and then decreases throughout a session (Higa, Thaw, & Staddon, 1993;Innis, Cooper, & Mitchell, 1993;Innis, Mitchell, & Staddon, 1993;Wynne, Staddon, & Delius, 1996). Tracking in cyclical schedules has been found when intervals are changed by various functions, such as arithmetic, logarithmic, and geometric (Innis & Staddon, 1971).…”

mentioning

confidence: 89%

Serial pattern learning of temporal intervals

Church

Lacourse

1998

Animal Learning & Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The problem was to determine how rats adjust the times of their lever responses to repeating sequences of interfood intervals. In Experiment 1, rats were trained on an interval schedule of reinforcement with a 12-element Fleshler-Hoffman series with a mean of 60 sec; the order was as follows: ascending, random with repetition, random with replacement, random without replacement. In Experiment 2, rats were trained with a lO-elementascending or descending series (from 20to 2 9 sec), and in a ramp procedure in which these intervals increased and then decreased repeatedly. In the ascending, descending, and ramp conditions (but not in the random conditions), postreinforcement pause (PRP) was a function of the interval. PRP was most highly correlated with an interval later in the series. Theories of conditioning and timing based on the averaging of past experience must be modified to account for such anticipatory behavior.Animals learn to adjust their behavior on the basis of past experiences. Theories of learning describe the way that these experiences are aggregated, normally by some type of averaging mechanism. In stochastic models of learning, current performance is determined jointly by the most recent example and all previous examples (Bush & Mosteller, 1955;Rescorla& Wagner, 1972). Normally, the weight given to the recent example is small, so that the adjustments are gradual; in some cases, the weight given to the recent example is large, so that adjustments are rapid. But the linear averaging of stochastic models oflearning does not provide a way for animals to predict the future on the basis of trends.In an unchanging environment, one cannot determine whether animals are affected by the long-term past, the recent past, or the pattern of events. If animals used a weighted average of previous intervals with a small or large weight for recent intervals, or if they used the past pattern of intervals to predict the future intervals, they would have the same behavior in a constant environment. To determine whether or not animals are responsive to patterns as well as averages, it is necessary to present sequences of examples that are not all the same.In a series of experiments on the effect of changes in the magnitude of reinforcement on running speed of rats in a straight alley, rats have been shown to be sensitive to the pattern of the changes in amount, and not simply the short-term or long-term average amount (Fountain & Hulse,

show abstract

Temporal Control by Progressive‐interval Schedules of Reinforcement

Cited by 10 publications

References 15 publications

Progressive ratio schedules of reinforcement.

Progressive ratio schedules of reinforcement.

Response Persistence Under Ratio and Interval Reinforcement Schedules

Serial pattern learning of temporal intervals

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About