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How do reinforcers affect choice? Preference pulses after responses and reinforcers
Stephanie Gomes-Ng1, Douglas Elliffe1, Sarah Cowie1
1The University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
|June 3, 2017
Summary
Preference pulses after reinforcers may not solely reflect reinforcer effects. Analyzing visit data alongside local choice provides a clearer understanding of how reinforcers influence behavior, improving accuracy in choice experiments.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral Psychology
- Animal Behavior
- Operant Conditioning
Background:
- Concurrent schedules of reinforcement often show 'preference pulses'— temporary increases in preference for the recently chosen option.
- These pulses may reflect local reinforcer effects, but similar patterns occur after non-reinforced responses, suggesting confounding factors.
- Previous methods proposed subtracting non-reinforced response pulses from reinforced pulses to isolate reinforcer effects.
Purpose of the Study:
- To reanalyze existing choice data to determine if observed changes in choice after reinforcers are truly related to the reinforcers themselves.
- To evaluate the effectiveness of McLean et al.'s (2014) preference-pulse correction method.
- To compare the utility of local choice analyses versus visit analyses in understanding reinforcer effects.
Main Methods:
- Reanalysis of data from choice experiments where reinforcers had different functional roles.
- Comparison of local choice, mean visit length, and visit-length distributions following reinforced and non-reinforced responses.
- Application and evaluation of the preference-pulse correction method.
Main Results:
- The reanalysis confirmed the utility of the preference-pulse correction for identifying reinforcer effects on choice.
- However, visit analyses indicated that 'residual pulses' (corrected pulses) might not accurately represent reinforcer effects.
- Reinforcer effects were more clearly discernible through visit analyses than through local-choice analyses.
Conclusions:
- While preference-pulse correction is useful, visit analyses offer a more direct and accurate measure of reinforcer effects on choice.
- Combining local-choice and visit analyses provides a comprehensive approach to understanding behavioral allocation in concurrent schedules.
- Future research should prioritize visit analyses to robustly determine the impact of reinforcers on choice behavior.
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