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Journal List > J Exp Anal Behav > v.8(2); Mar 1965

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J Exp Anal Behav. 1965 March; 8(2): 107–116.
PMCID: PMC1338372
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Overt “mediating” behavior during temporally spaced responding1
Victor G. Laties, Bernard Weiss, Richard L. Clark, and Michael D. Reynolds
1From the Departments of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Psychiatry, and Medicine (Division of Clinical Pharmacology). Supported in part by grants MH-03229 and MH-07498 from the National Institutes of Health. Reprints may be obtained from Victor G. Laties, Dept. of Pharmacology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205.
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Abstract
A rat was trained on a schedule that programmed reinforcements only when a minimum waiting time between successive responses was exceeded (DRL schedule). It was observed to fill much of the pause between lever presses with a stereotyped behavioral chain: it would take its tail in its mouth and nibble it. This behavior was shown to be functionally related to the efficiency with which the subject spaced its responses. It is thought to have served as mediating behavior, providing discriminating stimuli for appropriate lever presses.
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Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
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