1969/11/01 by D. Alan Stubbs, Stanley S. Pliskoff · 10 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Psychology · #Animal Nutrition and Physiology #Behavioral and Psychological Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1901/jeab.1969.12-887
crossref issued 1969/11/01 · crossref published 1969/11/01 · crossref published-print 1969/11/01 · openalex publication_date 1969/11/01 · crossref created 2006/03/03 · crossref published-online 2013/02/26 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · crossref deposited 2023/11/06 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Responding by pigeons on one key of a two-key chamber alternated the color of the second key, on which responding produced food according to a variable-interval schedule of reinforcement. From time to time, reinforcement would be available for a response, but in the presence of a particular stimulus, either red or green light on the key. Red or green was chosen irregularly from reinforcement to reinforcement, so that a proportion of the total number of reinforcements could be specified for each color. Experimental manipulations involved variations of (1) the proportions for each color, (2) changeover delay, or, alternatively, (3) a fixed-ratio changeover requirement. The main findings were: (1) relative overall rates of responding and relative times in the presence of a key color approximated the proportions of reinforcements obtained in the presence of that color, while relative local rates of responding changed little; (2) changeover rate decreased as the proportions diverged from 0.50; (3) relative overall rate of responding and relative time remained constant as the changeover delay was increased from 2 to 32 sec, with reinforcement proportions for red and green of 0.75 and 0.25, but they increased above 0.90 when a fixed-ratio changeover of 20 responses replaced the changeover delay; (4) changeover rate decreased as the delay or fixed-ratio was increased.