A study of misbehavior: token reinforcement in the rat.
Food reinforcers can slow token delivery because the food itself competes for attention.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists watched rats carry ball bearings to a food cup.
Each bearing traded for food or water.
They timed how fast the rats moved the tokens.
They changed token type and reinforcer type to see what slowed the rats down.
What they found
Food rewards made rats take longer to move tokens than water rewards.
Nylon tokens moved slower than metal ones.
Changing hunger or thirst levels did not change speed.
The food itself seemed to pull the rats off task.
How this fits with other research
Storch et al. (2012) later saw the same food-cue problem in kids.
When food followed toy play, children stopped playing and looked for snacks.
Token delivery did not hurt play, only food did.
Together the two studies show food can act like a stop sign.
THOMPSON et al. (1965) and Kohlenberg et al. (1976) already proved token economies work in hospitals and cottages.
The rat lab now tells us why details matter: pick the right token and reinforcer or risk delays.
Why it matters
If your learner stalls after earning a token, check what the token buys.
Swap food reinforcers for praise or activities when tokens must move fast.
Pick tokens that feel neutral, not tasty or noisy.
Small design tweaks keep the economy flowing.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of this research was to investigate the phenomenon of misbehavior described by Breland and Breland (1961). Rats were trained to obtain ball-bearings and drop them in a hole for food or water reinforcers. In confirmation of the Brelands' observation, many subjects were slow to deliver the balls, and frequently attempted to chew them before they were dropped. A series of four experiments, in which the same rats were used throughout, showed that delivery times tended to be longer with food than with water, and that these times increased when nylon balls were substituted. The effect of motivational level was investigated by varying both deprivation and amount of prefeeding; no effect on delivery time was detected, although other measures of performance were affected by motivational factors. Similar results were obtained in a final experiment that employed a new set of naive subjects. The studies demonstrated that misbehavior can be studied in an experimental situation, and the results supported an analysis in terms of competition between stimulus-reinforcer and response-reinforcer contingencies. The question of why such effects have not been reported in previous token reinforcer studies was unanswered.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1978 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1978.29-115