The reinforcement value of schedule-induced drinking.
Fast food schedules can turn water into an extra reinforcer for some animals, so watch for schedule-induced side behaviors in your clients.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Cohen (1975) asked a simple question: does water become more valuable when food comes faster?
Five rats lived in a box with two levers. Food arrived on one lever at different speeds. The other lever opened a water spout for a few seconds.
The rat could switch between levers any time. The team watched how often the rat chose water when food came every 30, 60, or 120 seconds.
What they found
Two rats drank more and worked harder for water when food arrived every 30 seconds. The same two rats spent less time at the water lever as food rate dropped.
For the other three rats, water choice stayed flat no matter how fast food came. The water was only extra reinforcing for some animals.
How this fits with other research
CATANIDINSMOOR (1962) saw the same post-food sipping under food schedules, but only described it. Cohen (1975) went further and measured how much the sipping was worth.
Morris et al. (1982) later showed the sipping is not a simple reflex to food. They saw it fade when other behaviors could compete. That explains why only two rats in Cohen (1975) treated water as a strong reinforcer: different response options change the value.
Wilson et al. (1987) swapped water for extra food and still got schedule-induced over-eating. The pattern holds across reinforcer types, strengthening the adjunctive-behavior concept.
Why it matters
Your client may start odd “extra” behaviors when reinforcers come fast. The behavior is not junk; it can become its own reinforcer and compete with your target response.
Try inserting brief, contingent access to the side behavior instead of blocking it. Lowering the main reinforcer rate or adding alternate tasks can also thin the adjunctive response.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The effect of food reinforcement schedules on the reinforcement value of drinking water was evaluated. Food-deprived rats were exposed to concurrent, identical variable-time schedules of food presentation, the food thus being delivered independently of the rats' behavior. When the relative amount of time spent in a schedule component stabilized, an opportunity to drink water was introduced into one schedule component. The value of the variable-time schedules was varied from 60 to 90 to 270 sec. The relative amount of time spent in the schedule component associated with drinking water was a decreasing function of food frequency for two animals and remained constant for the third. Drinking rates were direct functions of food frequency, and the amount of water drunk per pellet was an inverse function of food frequency. The reinforcement value of drinking water, according to the Matching Law, was a direct function of the frequency of food presentation. It was concluded that food reinforcement schedules indirectly influence rates of drinking by altering the reinforcement value of drinking water and that certain properties of schedule-induced drinking can be accounted for in terms of the reinforcement value of drinking water, the rate of drinking, and the frequency of food presentation.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1975 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1975.23-37