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Within-session patterns of responding when rats run in a T-maze
1Department of Psychology, McNeese State University, Lake Charles, LA 70609, USA.
Behavioural Processes
|June 5, 2014
Summary
Behavioral research shows that running times in T-mazes systematically change within experimental sessions. These within-session patterns are influenced by reinforcement schedules, extending previous findings on free-operant responding.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral psychology
- Animal behavior research
- Experimental psychology
Background:
- Free-operant responding exhibits systematic within-session changes, typically increasing then decreasing, even with constant reinforcement contingencies.
- These temporal patterns in behavior are a known phenomenon in operant conditioning research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether running times in a T-maze procedure also display systematic within-session changes.
- To examine how variations in reinforcement amount or rate affect these within-session running time patterns.
- To determine the independence of within-session running time changes from response accuracy and reinforcement timing.
Main Methods:
- Rats were trained to run in a T-maze, with running times recorded within experimental sessions.
- Experiments manipulated the amount and rate of reinforcement, response accuracy, and the timing of reinforcement delivery.
- Within-session running time data were analyzed for systematic changes and their relationship to experimental manipulations.
Main Results:
- Running times in the T-maze showed significant within-session changes, mirroring patterns observed in free-operant responding.
- The pattern of running times varied with changes in the amount or rate of reinforcement.
- Within-session running time changes were independent of response accuracy and were not affected by early session reinforcement manipulations.
Conclusions:
- The study extends the generality of within-session behavioral changes to discrete-trials procedures like T-maze running.
- Similar factors appear to influence both free-operant responding and T-maze running times within sessions.
- These findings suggest a common underlying mechanism driving temporal patterns in different behavioral contexts.
