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Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior logoLink to Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
. 1967 Nov;10(6):535–540. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1967.10-535

Free-operant compounding of variable-interval and low-rate discriminative stimuli1

Stanley J Weiss
PMCID: PMC1338424  PMID: 6080831

Abstract

Four rats were trained on a schedule containing stimuli associated with variable-interval 30-sec and differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate 20-sec schedules of reinforcement. Subsequently, a stimulus compounding test was administered that included individual presentations of two intensities of each stimulus plus compounds of these stimuli. In training, extremely high rates were emitted to the variable-interval stimulus, and very low rates to the differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate stimulus. Compounding the two training stimuli always produced an overall response rate intermediate between the rates controlled by the two stimuli separately presented. Essentially the same relationship held with different stimulus intensities. These results resolve the confounding of response and reinforcement variables present in previous conditioning studies reporting response averaging. They are discussed in terms of the incompatibility of the response chains associated with the individual stimuli compounded.

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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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