Time and rate measures in choice transitions.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Three experiments with pigeons studied the relation between time and rate measures of behavior under conditions of changing preference. Experiment 1 studied a concurrent chain schedule with random-interval initial links and fixed-interval terminal links; Experiment 2 studied a multiple chained random-interval fixed-interval schedule; and Experiment 3 studied simple concurrent random-interval random-interval schedules. In Experiment 1, and to a lesser extent in the other two experiments, session-average initial-link wait-time differences were linearly related to session-average response-rate differences. In Experiment 1, and to a lesser extent in Experiment 3, ratios of session-average initial-link wait times and response rates were related by a power function. The weaker relations between wait and response measures in Experiment 2 appear to be due to the absence of competition between responses. In Experiments 1 and 2, initial-link changes lagged behind terminal-link changes. These findings may have implications for the relations between fixed- and variable-interval procedures and suggest that more attention should be paid to temporal measures in studies of free-operant choice.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Cerutti, DT; Staddon, JER
Published Date
- March 2004
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 81 / 2
Start / End Page
- 135 - 154
PubMed ID
- 15239489
Pubmed Central ID
- PMC1284976
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1938-3711
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0022-5002
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1901/jeab.2004.81-135
Language
- eng