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J Exp Anal Behav. 1969 November; 12(6): 887–895.
doi: 10.1901/jeab.1969.12-887.
PMCID: PMC1338698
Concurrent responding with fixed relative rate of reinforcement1
D. Alan Stubbs and Stanley S. Pliskoff
1Dedicated to B. F. Skinner in his sixty-fifth year. The research was performed at the Institute for Behavioral Research and was supported by grants to that Institute: Grant NsG 450 from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and by an NIH General Research Support Grant #5 501 FR 05636. Reprints may be obtained from D. Alan Stubbs, Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10453.
Abstract
Responding by pigeons on one key of a two-key chamber alternated the color of the second key, on which responding produced food according to a variable-interval schedule of reinforcement. From time to time, reinforcement would be available for a response, but in the presence of a particular stimulus, either red or green light on the key. Red or green was chosen irregularly from reinforcement to reinforcement, so that a proportion of the total number of reinforcements could be specified for each color. Experimental manipulations involved variations of (1) the proportions for each color, (2) changeover delay, or, alternatively, (3) a fixed-ratio changeover requirement. The main findings were: (1) relative overall rates of responding and relative times in the presence of a key color approximated the proportions of reinforcements obtained in the presence of that color, while relative local rates of responding changed little; (2) changeover rate decreased as the proportions diverged from 0.50; (3) relative overall rate of responding and relative time remained constant as the changeover delay was increased from 2 to 32 sec, with reinforcement proportions for red and green of 0.75 and 0.25, but they increased above 0.90 when a fixed-ratio changeover of 20 responses replaced the changeover delay; (4) changeover rate decreased as the delay or fixed-ratio was increased.
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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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  • Shimp Charles P. The concurrent reinforcement of two interresponse times: the relative frequency of an interresponse time equals its relative harmonic length. J Exp Anal Behav. 1969 May;12(3):403–411. [PubMed]
  • Shull RL, Pliskoff SS. Changeover delay and concurrent schedules: some effects on relative performance measures. J Exp Anal Behav. 1967 Nov;10(6):517–527. [PubMed]