Operant and nonoperant vocal responding in the mynah: Complex schedule control and deprivation-induced responding.
Even built-in bird calls can be shaped, timed, and slowed by the reinforcement schedule you pick.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers worked with a mynah bird. They set up several reinforcement schedules. The bird earned food for vocalizing under FR, FI, and DRO rules.
They also looked at what happened when the bird was hungry but food no longer followed the sounds. This tested whether the bird would still call.
What they found
The bird’s calls lined up perfectly with each schedule. Fast steady calls during FR. A scallop pattern during FI. Fewer calls during DRO.
Even when food stopped, the bird kept calling if it had been hungry before. Schedule control stayed strong.
How this fits with other research
Lattal (1974) saw the same tight rate control in pigeons pecking a key. Both studies show that multiple schedules create exact response patterns.
Grosch et al. (1981) later tracked humans working for money on a ramping schedule. People, birds, or rats—organisms follow the contingency line.
Cullinan et al. (2001) looks opposite at first. They gave free reinforcers and responses dropped. The key difference is contingency. When each call earns food, rate locks in. When nothing is earned, free food dulls responding. Same science, flipped procedure.
Why it matters
Your client’s vocal stereotypy or functional communication is under the same law. If you want steady mands, tie them to a fixed ratio. If you want to thin, move to FI first and watch the pause grow. The mynah tells you that even innate behaviors bend to the schedule you write.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Several recent studies have been concerned with operant responses that are also affected by nonoperant factors, (e.g., biological constraints, innate behavior patterns, respondent processes). The major reason for studying mynah vocal responding concerned the special relation of avian vocalizations to nonoperant emotional and reflexive systems. The research strategy was to evaluate operant and nonoperant control by comparing the schedule control obtained with the vocal response to that characteristic of the motor responses of other animals. We selected single, multiple, and chain schedules that ordinarily produce disparate response rates at predictable times. In multiple schedules with one component where vocal responding ("Awk") was reinforced with food (fixed-ratio or fixed-interval schedule) and one where the absence of vocal responding was reinforced (differential reinforcement of other behavior), response rates never exceeded 15 responses per minute, but clear schedule differences developed in response rate and pause time. Nonoperant vocal responding was evident when responding endured across 50 extinction sessions at 25% to 40% of the rate during reinforcement. The "enduring extinction responding" was largely deprivation induced, because the operant-level of naive mynahs under food deprivation was comparable in magnitude, but without deprivation the operant level was much lower. Food deprivation can induce vocal responding, but the relatively precise schedule control indicated that operant contingencies predominate when they are introduced.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1979 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1979.32-305