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Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior logoLink to Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
. 1980 Jul;34(1):61–76. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1980.34-61

A comparison of ratio and interval reinforcement schedules with comparable interreinforcement times

George W Capehart, David A Eckerman, Marilyn Guilkey, Richard L Shull
PMCID: PMC1332945  PMID: 16812180

Abstract

Pigeons were trained to peck keys on fixed-ratio and fixed-interval schedules of food reinforcement. Both schedules produced a pattern of behavior characterized as pause and run, but the relation of pausing to time between reinforcers differed for the two schedules even when mean time between reinforcers was the same. Pausing in the fixed ratio occupied less of the time between reinforcers for shorter interreinforcer times. For two of three birds, the relation was reversed at longer interreinforcer times. As an interreinforcer time elapsed, there was an increasing tendency to return to responding for the fixed interval, but a roughly constant tendency to return to responding for the fixed-ratio schedule. In Experiment 1 these observations were made for both single-reinforcement schedules and multiple schedules of fixed-ratio and fixed-interval reinforcement. In Experiment 2 the observations were extended to a comparison of fixed-ratio versus variable-interval reinforcement schedules, where the distribution of interreinforcement times in the variable interval approximated that for the fixed ratio.

Keywords: fixed-ratio schedule of reinforcement, fixed-interval schedule of reinforcement, variable-interval schedule of reinforcement, postreinforcement pause, proximity, delay of reinforcement, pigeons

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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