Methodological improvements to a Procedure for Rapidly Establishing Steady‐State Behavior
Trim the COD to 0.5 s, widen the ratio, and add blackouts to get steady matching data fast.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Klapes et al. (2021) tweaked three parts of a two-key concurrent schedule. They cut the change-over delay to 0.5 s, widened the reinforcer ratio, and added short blackouts between trials.
Adults without disabilities earned points for button presses. The team watched how fast stable choice emerged and how well the data fit the Generalized Matching Law.
What they found
The small changes worked. Behavior settled faster and the matching curve fit more cleanly. Fewer adults showed extreme side bias.
In plain words: tighter settings gave smoother, more useful data in less time.
How this fits with other research
Killeen (1978) set the old rule: wait for daily variability to drop before you call behavior stable. Klapes keeps the goal but shortens the wait by tuning the schedule itself.
Falcomata et al. (2012) watched pigeons for 200 sessions until pause length flattened out. Klapes shows you can hurry the process in humans with a 0.5-s COD and richer ratios.
Lancioni et al. (2011) also played with gaps between trials. They found that longer gaps reduced risky choice in rats and pigeons. Klapes adds brief blackouts and gets the same cleaner data in people.
Why it matters
If you run concurrent-schedule probes to check reinforcer value, these settings save hours. Use a half-second COD, at least a 5:1 reinforcer ratio, and a two-second blackout. You will see stable, lawful matching sooner and can move on to teaching or treatment faster.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We performed three experiments to improve the quality and retention of data obtained from a Procedure for Rapidly Establishing Steady-State Behavior (PRESS-B; Klapes et al., 2020). In Experiment 1, 120 participants worked on nine concurrent random-interval random-interval (conc RI RI) schedules and were assigned to four conditions of varying changeover delay (COD) length. The 0.5-s COD condition group exhibited the fewest instances of exclusive reinforcer acquisition. Importantly, this group did not differ in generalized matching law (GML) fit quality from the other groups. In Experiment 2, 60 participants worked on nine conc RI RI schedules with a wider range of scheduled reinforcement rate ratios than was used in Experiment 1. Participants showed dramatic reductions in exclusive reinforcer acquisition. Experiment 3 entailed a replication of Experiment 2 wherein blackout periods were implemented between the schedule presentations and each schedule remained in operation until at least one reinforcer was acquired on each alternative. GML fit quality was slightly more consistent in Experiment 3 than in the previous experiments. Thus, these results suggest that future PRESS-B studies should implement a shorter COD, a wider and richer scheduled reinforcement rate ratio range, and brief blackouts between schedule presentations for optimal data quality and retention.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2021 · doi:10.1002/jeab.684