Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 7, 2026

A Novel Procedure for Evaluating the Reinforcing Properties of Tastants in Laboratory Rats: Operant Intraoral Self-administration
Published on: February 6, 2014
Response rate under varying frequency of non-contingent reinforcement
Abstract:
Two White Carneaux hen pigeons were exposed to a 60-sec random-interval baseline procedure. Six different exteroceptive stimuli were successively correlated, within a single session, with blocks of 10 reinforcement presentations. Following this training, a non-contingent reinforcement procedure was instated with inter-reinforcement intervals of 5, 15, 30, 60, 120, and 240 sec. Within a single session, each non-contingent frequency was correlated with one of the previously presented discriminative stimuli. After an initial increase in the rate of responding as the result of a high density of non-contingent reinforcements, the rate declined as exposure to each non-contingent frequency was prolonged.
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