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Related Concept Videos

Timing and Consequences on Behavior01:08

Timing and Consequences on Behavior

In operant conditioning, the timing of reinforcement is crucial. For animals like rats and cats, immediate reinforcement (within a few seconds) is much more effective than delayed reinforcement. For example, a food reward for a rat needs to follow within 30 seconds of pressing a bar to be effective. 
Humans, however, can respond to delayed reinforcers. We often make decisions between immediate small rewards and delayed larger rewards. This ability to delay gratification is a significant factor...
Reinforcement Schedules01:24

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Positive reinforcement is a powerful method for teaching new behaviors to both animals and humans. B.F. Skinner demonstrated this with his experiments using rats in a Skinner box. When a rat pressed a lever, it received a food pellet. This immediate reward encouraged the rat to repeat the behavior. This method, where a reward follows every instance of the behavior, is known as continuous reinforcement. It is highly effective for establishing new behaviors quickly.
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Primary and Secondary Reinforcers

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Instinctive Drift01:05

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Instinctive drift refers to the tendency of animals to revert to their innate behaviors despite repeated reinforcement. Breland and Breland demonstrated this concept in an experiment with a raccoon. The raccoon was trained to pick up two coins and place them in a container in exchange for food. Initially, the raccoon learned to associate the coins with food, making them a conditioned stimulus or a substitute for food. However, over time, the raccoon became less willing to put the coins into the...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Measuring Delay Discounting in Humans Using an Adjusting Amount Task
07:47

Measuring Delay Discounting in Humans Using an Adjusting Amount Task

Published on: January 9, 2016

Human risky choice: delay sensitivity depends on reinforcer type.

Matthew L Locey1, Cynthia J Pietras, Timothy D Hackenberg

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. mlocey@ufl.edu

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes
|January 23, 2009
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Human subjects showed a preference for variable delay choices, unlike prior research. This suggests procedural differences, not species, may influence risk-sensitivity in delay-based decisions.

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral Economics
  • Comparative Psychology

Background:

  • Methodological discrepancies exist between human and nonhuman animal research on delay-based risky choice.
  • Understanding decision-making under uncertainty is crucial across species.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To bridge the methodological gap in delay-based risky choice research between humans and nonhuman animals.
  • To investigate human risk-sensitivity in delay-based choices using procedures common in animal research.

Main Methods:

  • Human participants made repeated choices between variable-time and fixed-time schedules of reinforcement (video clips).
  • Pairwise choices between variable-time schedules with differing delay distributions were presented.
  • Experimental results were compared with participants' verbal reports.

Main Results:

  • Three out of four human subjects consistently preferred variable-delay over fixed-delay schedules across various mean delays.
  • Participants favored variable-delay distributions with a higher probability of shorter delays.
  • A weak correlation was found between experimental choices and verbal reports.

Conclusions:

  • Human risk-sensitivity in delay-based choice may align with nonhuman animal patterns when similar procedures are used.
  • Procedural differences, rather than species, could be a key determinant of risk-sensitivity.
  • Nonlinear discounting of delayed reinforcement may explain observed preferences for variable delays.