Sexual reinforcement in the female rat.
Sex can reinforce operant behavior, and small setup tweaks double or triple response rates.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists let female rats press a lever to open a door. Behind the door waited a male rat.
When the pair could mate, the females pressed more. The team then tried two males, a lighter lever, and hormone implants. Each tweak made the females press faster.
What they found
Sex works as a reinforcer. Females worked hardest when two males were waiting.
Simple changes—adding a second male or lowering the force needed—tripled the number of reinforcers earned in the same time.
How this fits with other research
Rojahn et al. (1994) showed that just seeing a castrated male could reinforce pressing. The 1997 study moves that idea forward: mating, not just company, drives the behavior.
Lowe et al. (1995) found that stiff levers slow rats down. The 1997 paper proves the opposite tweak—lighter levers—speeds things up when sex is the pay-off.
Coe et al. (1997) taught rats to press for delayed food. Shearn et al. (1997) show the same response can be started and kept going with immediate sexual reinforcement, a very different kind of pay-off.
Why it matters
You now have lab proof that social and sexual events can power behavior as reliably as food. When you design token systems or group contingencies for teens or adults, think beyond snacks. Preferred peers, dance time, or brief social praise can act as reinforcers if access is clearly contingent on the target response. Test, time, and deliver—just like these rats taught us.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Sexual reinforcement in the female rat was studied in a preparation that allowed continuous operant responding for access to a male rat leading to intromission. Experiment 1 used a high operant level nose-poke response to test the possible reinforcing effects of some components of access to a male. A simple tone stimulus used as a conditioned reinforcer and two odor stimuli, target male bedding and emulsified preputial gland, were tested. None of these contingent events altered responding above or below operant level. Access to the male, which was always accompanied by intromission, immediately increased response rate when it was made contingent upon the nose-poke response. Performance on fixed-ratio schedules was erratic, and response rate was low in comparison to typical food-reinforced responding. An interresponse-time analysis indicated, however, that some effect of the ratio contingency may have been present. In Experiment 2, several modifications of the procedure were tested with the objective of creating a more tractable preparation for behavior analysis. Response type and the hormone delivery method were changed, and 2 target males were used instead of 1. The latter tripled the average number of reinforcers earned in a single session. Differences between sexual and other reinforcers are discussed in terms of procedural, quantitative, and motivational aspects of the sexual reinforcement procedure.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1997 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1997.68-399