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. 1974 May;21(3):491–499. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1974.21-491

Time allocation and response rate1

Charles P Shimp
PMCID: PMC1333222  PMID: 16811761

Abstract

Food reinforcement for key pecking by three pigeons was arranged by a variable-interval schedule and a device that assigned each reinforcement to one of 10 component response rates corresponding to 10 classes of equally reinforced interresponse times ranging from 1.0 to 6.0 sec in 0.5-sec classes. The overall number of reinforcements per hour was varied from one to more than 60. Overall response rate was a monotonically increasing, negatively accelerated function of the overall number of reinforcements per hour. This function was decomposed into two time-allocation functions: (1) the time allocated to all of the reinforced component response rates as a function of the total reinforcement rate, and, (2) the time allocated to a particular reinforced component response rate as a function of the reinforcement rate for that component. Asymptotic response rate was predicted by combining the asymptotes of the two separate time-allocation functions: virtually all of the time was spent responding, and the percentage of the time spent responding that was allocated to a particular reinforced component response rate roughly equalled the relative reinforcements per hour for that component.

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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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