Operant responding in Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens) as a function of schedule of reinforcement and visual reinforcers.
A flash of light can act like food: it will raise behavior on ratio schedules and cut it on DRO.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers put Siamese fighting fish in small tanks. A lever stuck into each tank.
When the fish pressed the lever they saw a brief movie or a flash of projector light. The team tried three schedules: every press (FR1), every second press (FR2), or a pause got the light (DRO).
What they found
Fish pressed most when each press paid off (FR1). Presses stayed high on FR2.
On DRO the fish hardly pressed at all. A simple light or film clip worked like food.
How this fits with other research
Kahng et al. (1999) and Lejuez et al. (2001) later saw the same DRO drop, but with people who hurt themselves or others. The schedule, not the species, drove the drop.
Reed (2023) added a blinking cue right before payoff. That twist boosted variety in college students, showing visual events can both reinforce and signal.
Dugdale et al. (2000) went further. They paid autistic teens only for new key-press patterns. Like the fish work, it proves you can reinforce a property of behavior—variability—rather than just rate.
Why it matters
You already use edibles or praise. Try pairing a brief visual—spinning light, short video clip—with the response you want to see. On FR schedules it will push rate up; on DRO it will push rate down. The same cheap cue works across clients, settings, and target behaviors.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Siamese fighting fish were trained to emit an operant response that was reinforced by the opportunity to view a motion picture film image of another fish. Performance under various schedules of reinforcement was examined. When reinforcement followed every response and when reinforcement was delivered after every second response, the number of responses per session was higher than during operant level or during extinction. Reinforcement delivered following intervals of no responding (differential reinforcement of other behavior) markedly decreased responding. Light from a projector without film was found to be as effective a reinforcer as film reinforcement. Responding when projector light reinforcement followed every response was maintained at approximately the same level as that obtained under film reinforcement. Responses per session decreased when only the light was delivered on a differential-reinforcement-of-other-behavior schedule. The behavior of the fish during presentation of the film was markedly different from their behavior while the projector light was being presented.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1973 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1973.20-355