Selected abstracts from the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, September 1993.
Reinforcement rate only protects behavior in multiple schedules, not in simple ones, so choose your schedule type with care.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Anonymous (1994) pulled together short reports from a 1993 lab journal. The work tested how often food was given and how that changed pigeons’ key pecks.
Some birds worked on simple schedules. Others worked on multiple schedules that switched every few minutes. Free food was later dropped in to see if the birds would keep pecking.
What they found
In multiple schedules, birds that got food more often kept pecking longer when free food showed up. In simple schedules, the rate of food did not matter; the birds slowed the same amount.
Free food always cut response rates, but the cut was smaller when the schedule was multiple and rich.
How this fits with other research
Cohen et al. (1993) ran almost the same pigeon study and got the same split result. The two papers form a clean replication pair.
Gillberg (1980) looks like a clash but is not. That study held food rate equal across two multiple parts and saw no difference in resistance. The key is that Anonymous (1994) varied the rate inside each part; C kept it the same. Same method, different lever.
Burgess et al. (1986) review backs the free-food disruption. Their summary shows that extra non-contingent food usually cuts responding, matching the drop seen here.
Why it matters
If you want a skill to stick during tough times, run it on a multiple schedule and pack the richer component with reinforcement. Simple schedules won’t give you that shield. When you add non-contingent snacks or sensory breaks, expect a dip in responding—plan extra prompts or thicker reinforcement to hold the line.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Four experiments examined the relationship between rate of reinforcement and resistance to change in rats' and pigeons' responses under simple and multiple schedules of reinforcement.In Experiment 1, 28 rats responded under either simple fixed-ratio, variable-ratio, fixed-interval, or variable-interval schedules; in Experiment 2, 3 pigeons responded under simple fixed-ratio schedules.Under each schedule, rate of reinforcement varied across four successive conditions.In Experiment 3, 14 rats responded under either a multiple fixed-ratio schedule or a multiple fixed-interval schedule, each with two components that differed in rate of reinforcement.In Experiment 4, 7 pigeons responded under either a multiple fixed-ratio or a multiple fixed-interval schedule, each with three components that also differed in rate of reinforcement.Under each condition of each experiment, resistance to change was studied by measuring schedule-controlled performance under conditions with prefeeding, response-independent food during the schedule or during timeouts that separated components of the multiple schedules, and by measuring behavior under extinction.There were no consistent differences between rats and pigeons.There was no direct relationship between rates of reinforcement and resistance to change when rates of reinforcement varied across successive conditions in the simple schedules.By comparison, in the multiple schedules there was a direct relationship between rates of reinforcement and resistance to change during most tests of resistance to change.The major exception was delivering response-independent food during the schedule; this disrupted responding, but there was no direct relationship between rates of reinforcement and resistance to change in simple-or multiple-schedule contexts.The data suggest that rate of reinforcement determines resistance to change in multiple schedules, but that this relationship does not hold under simple schedules.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1994 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1994.27-557