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. 1976 Nov;26(3):415–423. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1976.26-415

Food deliveries during the pause on fixed-interval schedules1

Richard L Shull, Marilyn Guilkey
PMCID: PMC1333532  PMID: 16811957

Abstract

Pigeons were trained on fixed-interval schedules of food delivery. In Experiments I and II, the fixed interval was initiated by the previous fixed-interval reinforcer; in Experiment III, the fixed interval was initiated by the first key peck following the preceding fixed-interval reinforcer (a chain fixed-ratio one, fixed-interval schedule). During the postreinforcement pause, variable-time schedules delivered food independent of any specific response. Rate of food delivery during the pause had only small effects on pause duration in Experiments I and II. In Experiment III, however, pause duration increased systematically with the rate of food delivery during the pause. These data suggest that the momentary proximity to reinforcement delivered via the fixed-interval schedule exerts potent control over pause termination. Additional analysis revealed that pause termination was unaffected by the intermittent delivery of food during the pause. Such data suggest that the temporal control by fixed-interval schedules is highly resistant to interference.

Keywords: fixed-interval schedule, response-initiated fixed-interval schedule, postreinforcement pause, temporal control, delay of reinforcement, changeovers, 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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