RESPONSE RATE VIEWED AS ENGAGEMENT BOUTS: RESISTANCE TO EXTINCTION

Rats obtained food pellets by nose poking a lighted key, the illumination of which alternated every 50 s during a session between blinking and steady, signaling either a relatively rich (60 per hour) or relatively lean (15 per hour) rate of reinforcement. During one training condition, all the reinf...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior 2002-05, Vol.77 (3), p.211-231
Main Authors: Shull, Richard L., Gaynor, Scott T., Grimes, Julie A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Animals
Appetitive Behavior
Association Learning
behavioral momentum
bouts
Discrimination Learning
Extinction
Extinction, Psychological
key poke
Male
Motivation
Psychomotor Performance
Rats
Rats, Long-Evans
Reinforcement Schedule
resistance to change
Retention (Psychology)
Rodents
visits
Visual Perception
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Summary:Rats obtained food pellets by nose poking a lighted key, the illumination of which alternated every 50 s during a session between blinking and steady, signaling either a relatively rich (60 per hour) or relatively lean (15 per hour) rate of reinforcement. During one training condition, all the reinforcers in the presence of the rich‐reinforcement signal were response dependent (i.e., a variable‐interval schedule); during another condition only 25% were response dependent (i.e., a variable‐time schedule operated concurrently with a variable‐interval schedule). An extinction session followed each training block. For both kinds of training schedule, and consistent with prior results, response rate was more resistant to extinction in the presence of the rich‐reinforcement signal than in the presence of the lean‐reinforcement signal. Analysis of interresponse‐time distributions from baseline showed that differential resistance to extinction was not related to baseline differences in the rate of initiating response bouts or in the length of bouts. Also, bout‐initiation rate (like response rate) was most resistant to extinction in the presence of the rich‐reinforcement signal. These results support the proposal of behavioral momentum theory (e.g., Nevin & Grace, 2000) that resistance to extinction in the presence of a discriminative stimulus is determined more by the stimulus—reinforcer (Pavlovian) than by the stimulus—response—reinforcer (operant) contingency.
ISSN:0022-5002
1938-3711
DOI:10.1901/jeab.2002.77-211