Stimulus- and pellet-induced drinking during a successive discrimination.
Training order decides whether food or a light will trigger drinking under mixed schedules.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Rats worked under a two-part schedule. One part delivered food pellets. The other part showed a light but no food.
The order of these parts was switched for different groups. The team then watched when the rats drank. They wanted to see if training history controlled drinking more than the current food signal.
What they found
Some rats drank right after eating the pellet. Others drank as soon as the light came on. The same light could start or stop drinking, depending on which training came first.
Longer light periods made the light-on drinking last longer. Short periods made it fade quickly.
How this fits with other research
Selekman (1973) showed that delayed food acts like a stop sign for pigeons. The new study adds that training order decides which signal, food or light, becomes the stop or go sign for drinking.
Bloomfield (1966) split contrast into two steps: a quick spike and a steady final rate. Coleman (1987) finds a similar pair: pellet-driven gulps versus steady light-driven sips.
Maltz (1981) proved that what happens next in the schedule drives contrast. Here, how long each part lasts decides how strong the light-on drinking becomes. Same idea, new lever.
Why it matters
Your client’s history, not just your current plan, can turn a cue into a reinforcer or a punisher. Before you run a multielement program, map out what came first. Then adjust component length to speed up or slow down the response you want.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In three experiments, interim water drinking was examined in rats exposed to a multiple schedule whose two components were extinction and a variable-time 30-s schedule of food delivery. Two different drinking patterns were observed in Experiment 1. Pellet-induced drinking, characterized by high rates of postpellet drinking in the variable-time component, with little or no drinking in extinction, occurred when the acquisition of stable postpellet drinking preceded discrimination training. Stimulus-induced drinking, characterized by a burst of drinking at the onset of extinction, with no drinking during the variable-time schedule, occurred when discrimination training preceded all other experimental conditions. With extended training, stimulus-induced drinking eventually was accompanied by postpellet drinking. In Experiment 2, the rate of stimulus-induced drinking and the number of sessions during which it occurred without postpellet drinking were found to be inversely related to component duration. In Experiment 3, the rate of schedule-induced drinking was found to vary directly with component duration.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1987 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1987.48-61