Stochastic matching and the voluntary nature of choice.
Response patterns that mirror reinforcer ratios look voluntary to observers, even when they are not the most profitable.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Neuringer et al. (2007) ran five lab tests with college students.
Each person worked on two levers that paid off on different schedules.
Observers later watched the response patterns and rated how "voluntary" the choices looked.
What they found
The closer a person’s responses matched the payoff ratios, the more voluntary the act seemed.
Patterns that drifted away from matching felt less free to outside viewers.
How this fits with other research
Herrnstein et al. (1979) showed pigeons lose about 60 treats an hour when they match instead of maximize.
That looks like a clash: matching hurts payoff yet signals freedom.
The gap is in the lens: J et al. counted reinforcers, Allen et al. counted human impressions.
Green et al. (1999) add that brief visits to the lean schedule can still serve global optimization.
Together the papers say: matching may not be the richest path, but it is the one that looks most self-chosen.
Why it matters
When you graph a client’s choices, tight matching lines can be a social cue.
Parents and teachers see the even spread and think "he’s deciding on his own."
Use this perceptual bonus when shaping self-advocacy or leisure skills.
Keep the schedule ratios visible so the choice pattern itself becomes evidence of autonomy.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Attempts to characterize voluntary behavior have been ongoing for thousands of years. We provide experimental evidence that judgments of volition are based upon distributions of responses in relation to obtained rewards. Participants watched as responses, said to be made by "actors," appeared on a computer screen. The participant's task was to estimate how well each actor represented the voluntary choices emitted by a real person. In actuality, all actors' responses were generated by algorithms based on Baum's (1979) generalized matching function. We systematically varied the exponent values (sensitivity parameter) of these algorithms: some actors matched response proportions to received reinforcer proportions, others overmatched (predominantly chose the highest-valued alternative), and yet others undermatched (chose relatively equally among the alternatives). In each of five experiments, we found that the matchingactor's responses were judged most closely to approximate voluntary choice. We found also that judgments of high volition depended upon stochastic (or probabilistic) generation. Thus, stochastic responses that match reinforcer proportions best represent voluntary human choice.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2007 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2007.65-06