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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats
08:30

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats

Published on: February 15, 2015

Operant variability and voluntary action.

Allen Neuringer1, Greg Jensen

  • 1Department of Psychology, Reed College, Portland, Oregon 97202, USA. allen.neuringer@reed.edu

Psychological Review
|July 28, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Voluntary acts are controlled by reinforcement, demonstrating both functionality and unpredictability. This behavior-based theory reveals how reinforcers influence response patterns and variability in voluntary actions.

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Last Updated: Jun 10, 2026

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Operant Conditioning

Background:

  • Voluntary acts are characterized by a bidirectional relationship between responses and their controlling reinforcers.
  • Existing research extensively explores how reinforcers control voluntary responses, defining their functional nature.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the second characteristic of voluntary acts: the relationship between reinforcement and behavioral predictability/unpredictability.
  • To propose a behavior-based theory integrating functionality and variability in voluntary actions.

Main Methods:

  • Review of operant-conditioning research demonstrating reinforcer influence on behavioral variability.
  • Psychophysical experiments where participants judged the voluntariness of virtual actors' choices under intermittent reinforcement schedules.

Main Results:

  • Behavioral variability (from predictable to random) is directly influenced by reinforcement contingencies, functioning as an operant dimension.
  • Virtual actor behaviors were perceived as most voluntary when response distributions matched reinforcer distributions and variability shifted with reinforcement.

Conclusions:

  • Voluntary acts are defined by two key characteristics: reinforcement-controlled functionality and reinforcement-influenced unpredictability.
  • Behavioral variability is an operant dimension modulated by reinforcement, contributing to the perceived voluntariness of actions.