Dougan, Faculty Advisor, James

Kuh, J. Alfred

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Illinois Wesleyan UniversityDigital Commons @ IWUJohn Wesley Powell Student ResearchConference 1991, 2nd Annual JWP ConferenceApr 27th, 12:00 PM - 4:30 PMA Quantitative Analysis of the RelationshipBetween Response Rate and Reinforcement RateJ. Alfred KuhIllinois Wesleyan UniversityJames Dougan, Faculty AdvisorIllinois Wesleyan UniversityFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprcThis Event is brought to you for free and open access by The Ames Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Center for Curricular and FacultyDevelopment, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the President. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Commons @ IWU bythe faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@iwu.edu.©Copyright is owned by the author of this document.J. Alfred Kuh and James Dougan, Faculty Advisor, "A Quantitative Analysis of the Relationship Between Response Rateand Reinforcement Rate" (April 27, 1991). John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference. Paper 27.http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprc/1991/posters/27A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RESPONSE RATE AND REINFORCEMENT RATE J. Alfred Kuh, Department of Psychology, IWU, James Dougan* Traditional reinforcement theories have predicted a positive monotonic relationship between response rate and reinforcement rate. That is, response rates should rise as a function of increased reinforcement rate. More recently, several theories based on economic and regulatory models have predicted bitonic functions. That is, response rates should fIrst rise, and then fall, as a function of increased reinforcement rates. Several studies have found the predicted bitonic relationship. Unfortunately, many of these studies purporting to demonstrate bitonicity can be criticized because of various confounding variables. For example, in studies which vary reinforcement rate, a decreased rate of response at high !einforcement rates may be an artifact of satiation or of a shorter time available to respond. The present study attempts to replicate and extend the earlier studies by demonstrating bitonicity while controlling for confounding variables, in particular for satiation effects. Subjects were 10 rats: Each was exposed to a Variable Interval (VI) l5s and a VI30s schedule. Half of the subjects ran a IO-minute session, and half responded on a 30-minute session. We expect an inverse relationship between response rate and reinforcement rate in the 30-minute sessions, but a direct relationship during the lO-minute sessions. 

A Quantitative Analysis of the Relationship Between Response Rate and Reinforcement Rate

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A Quantitative Analysis of the Relationship Between Response Rate and Reinforcement Rate

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