Rate of response as a visual social stimulus.
Another person’s speed can act like a remote control for your client’s response rate.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists watched pairs of monkeys. One monkey pulled a chain at fast or slow speeds. The other monkey could press a bar.
The team asked: will the second monkey copy the first monkey’s speed? They tracked bar presses to find out.
What they found
The second monkey pressed faster when the first monkey pulled fast. It pressed slower when the first monkey pulled slow.
The monkey even matched new speeds it had never seen. Response rate worked like a social cue.
How this fits with other research
Jones et al. (1992) extends this idea. Their monkeys also copied abstract rules, like same versus different, using pictures on a screen.
Nakamura et al. (1986) pull back to the big picture. Their review shows matching laws hold across many studies, so social copying of rate is one example of a wider rule.
Baum (2021) adds a lens. He says behavior flows like water, not separate drops. Viewing response rate as a continuous stream helps explain why one monkey’s pace can guide another.
Why it matters
Your client may speed up or slow down to match peers or staff. Place fast workers next to a slow worker and watch the change. Use modeled pacing during fluency drills. Rate is a free, built-in prompt.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In Exp. 1, a high rate of responding (chain pulling) of a stimulus monkey was established as a visual positive discriminative stimulus for the operant behavior (bar pressing) of an observer monkey. The terminal performance of the observer under conditions in which a high rate of response of the stimulus monkey alternated in a variable temporal arrangement with a zero rate of response of the stimulus monkey (negative discriminative stimulus) was essentially the same as when nonbehavioral stimuli are correlated with the availability of reinforcement. By manipulating the schedule of reinforcement to change the rate of responding of the stimulus subject without changing its rate of reinforcement, Exp. 2 showed that the effective behavioral stimulus for the observer was the rate of chain pulling by the stimulus subject. A novel intermediate rate of responding by the stimulus monkey resulted in an intermediate rate (generalization) on the part of the observer during an extinction test. These experiments demonstrated that the rate of responding of one organism can function as a discriminative stimulus to control the rate of responding of another organism; and that the rate of responding is similar to other physical stimuli in terms of discrimination and generalization.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1970 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1970.13-233