Similar consumption and responding across single and multiple sources of drug.
Unit price alone controls drug consumption; adding extra sources at the same price changes nothing.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked a simple question: does it matter if cigarettes come from one machine or several? They let adult smokers earn puffs on either a single device or on two devices at once. The price per puff stayed the same in both setups.
Two small lab experiments tracked how many puffs people took and how fast they pressed the buttons. The goal was to see if adding a second source changed total smoking.
What they found
People smoked the same amount whether one or two machines were on. Response rate and total puffs did not budge. Only the unit price — work needed for each puff — controlled how much they consumed.
The number of sources was background noise. Behavior followed the price rule, not the gadget count.
How this fits with other research
Rojahn et al. (1994) already showed that raising the price of puffs cuts smoking, while money rewards stay untouched. Buitelaar et al. (1999) move the story forward: once price is locked, splitting the same price across two sources does not increase use.
Lobb et al. (1977) saw similar independence in pigeons. Birds pecked the same way whether extra schedules sat beside them or not. The new data say the rule holds for humans and cigarettes.
Honig et al. (1988) found contrast effects between food and alcohol when one reinforcer vanished. No such contrast appeared here; cigarettes stayed steady across single and multiple sources. The difference is method: Honig et al. (1988) removed a reinforcer, while Buitelaar et al. (1999) kept both sources available at equal price.
Why it matters
When you write behavior plans, think price, not place. A client who can earn tokens from two staff members will work the same as long as the cost per reward is unchanged. If you want to reduce a target behavior, raise the response requirement or the price, not the number of access points. Keep the math simple and the settings consistent.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Two experiments were conducted to assess whether total response output and total consumption would be similar when drugs are available from single and multiple sources of reinforcement, as predicted by behavioral economics. In Experiment 1, cigarette-deprived smokers were exposed to a concurrent-chains schedule in which equal fixed-ratio schedules served as the initial links, and different reinforcer magnitudes (i.e., number of cigarette puffs) were arranged across alternatives. After the session, obtained unit price was calculated and imposed in the next session when a different number of puffs was available according to a single fixed-ratio schedule. Thus, the unit price at which cigarette puffs could be earned was yoked within subjects across the single and concurrent-chains schedules. When plotted as a function of unit price, similar consumption and response rates were usually obtained across these schedules. Experiment 2 addressed a weakness of Experiment 1, namely, that responding was allocated exclusively to the larger reinforcer magnitude in concurrent-chains conditions, and therefore this schedule may have functioned as a single schedule. In Experiment 2, subjects were instructed to alternate responding between the two alternative schedules. Instructions produced approximately equal response allocation between the two alternatives. Again, similar consumption and response rates were observed across the single and instructed concurrent-chains schedules. These findings are discussed in the context of direct effects and behavioral economics perspectives of drug self-administration.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1999 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1999.72-299