On the effects of component durations and component reinforcement rates in multiple schedules.
Short schedule parts inflate response rates only when they also deliver richer reinforcement—flip the payoffs and the effect follows the food.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Reiss et al. (1982) worked with four pigeons in a chamber with two keys.
Each key lit up in red or green to signal a different schedule.
The birds pecked for food under multiple VI schedules that switched every few minutes.
The team changed two things: how long each color stayed on and how often food came in that color.
They ran four small experiments to see if short components alone make birds peck faster.
What they found
Shorter components only sped up pecking when they also held the richer payoff.
When the rich and lean sides flipped, the speed-up followed the food, not the short duration.
After the flip, the old short-rich side slowed down even though it was still short.
The authors ruled out "super-sensitivity" or bias; the birds simply tracked the better deal.
How this fits with other research
Hymowitz (1973) saw weak duration control over observing responses, foreshadowing that time alone is not enough.
Cohen et al. (1993) later showed that higher reinforcement rates in multiple schedules protect behavior against disruption, extending the 1982 finding into the realm of "behavior momentum."
Green et al. (1975) found local contrast surges within components, complementing the 1982 result that duration effects vanish after schedule reversals.
Together, the four papers say: watch the food rate, not the clock.
Why it matters
If you shorten a work period hoping to boost client responding, check which side carries the denser reinforcement.
A brief math center will look "better" only if it also pays off more often than the long reading center.
Before you claim "shorter intervals build momentum," run a reversal: swap the rich and lean sides.
If the boost moves with the payoff, you are seeing reinforcement control, not a magical duration effect.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Four experiments, each using the same six pigeons, investigated the effects of varying component durations and component reinforcement rates in multiple variable-interval schedules. Experiment 1 used unequal component durations in which one component was five times the duration of the other, and the shorter component was varied over conditions from 120 seconds to 5 seconds. The schedules were varied over five values for each pair of component durations. Sensitivity to reinforcement rate changes was the same at all component durations. In Experiment 2, both component durations were 5 seconds, and the schedules were again varied using both one and two response keys. Sensitivity to reinforcement was not different from the values found in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, various manipulations, including body-weight changes, reinforcer duration changes, blackouts, hopper lights correlated with keylights, and overall reinforcement rate changes were carried out. No reliable increase in reinforcement sensitivity resulted from any manipulation. Finally, in Experiment 4, reinforcement rates in the two components were kept constant and unequal, and the component durations were varied. Shorter components produced significantly increased response rates normally in the higher reinforcement rate component, but schedule reversals at short component durations eliminated the response rate increases. The effects of component duration on multiple schedule performance cannot be interpreted as changing sensitivity to reinforcement nor to changing bias.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1982 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1982.37-417