Inhibiting function of reinforcement: magnitude effects on variable-interval schedules.
Bigger reinforcers can briefly pause the next response—expect the lull and do not overcorrect it.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team gave thirsty rats tiny drinks on a variable-interval schedule.
They doubled the drink size in some sessions.
They timed how long the rat waited before pressing the lever again.
What they found
Bigger drinks made the rats pause longer after each sip.
The pause grew even when the overall payoff stayed the same.
In other words, a richer reinforcer briefly shut down the very behavior that produced it.
How this fits with other research
Landon et al. (2003) later showed the same drink size also steers choice.
Their rats picked the lever that had delivered the bigger sip, proving magnitude guides both pause and preference.
Lendenmann et al. (1982) looked like they disagreed: longer drink access raised response rates in chained schedules.
The pause versus rate difference comes from the schedule, not the reinforcer.
VI schedules let the animal take a break; chained schedules push the animal to keep going.
Levin et al. (2014) added extinction and prefeeding.
They found the bigger drink protected both response rate and memory, showing the pause is short-term while magnitude strengthens long-term resistance.
Why it matters
When you see a long pause after a big reinforcer, do not assume the item is weak.
The pause is a normal side effect of magnitude, not a failure of reinforcement.
Use this knowledge to avoid unnecessary program changes and to explain brief lulls to staff or parents.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In two experiments, the performance of rats under constant-probability and arithmetic variable-interval schedules respectively was compared when the concentration of a liquid reinforcer was varied within sessions; in other sessions, half of the reinforcers were randomly omitted. When the discriminative function of the reinforcer as a signal for a decrease in the probability of reinforcement was attenuated (the constant-probability schedule) the postreinforcement pause duration was nevertheless an increasing function of reinforcer magnitude. This relationship was also present, but more marked, when the temporal discriminative function of the reinforcer was enhanced (the arithmetic schedule). These results suggested that reinforcement has an unconditioned suppressive effect on the reinforced response distinct from any discriminative function it may acquire. The reinforcement-omission effect, where response rate accelerates following omission, was observed when the reinforcer functioned as an effective temporal discriminative stimulus, but not when such temporal control was absent.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1978 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1978.30-1