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Related Concept Videos

Reinforcement Schedules01:24

Reinforcement Schedules

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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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Timing and Consequences on Behavior01:08

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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. 
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Related Experiment Video

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A Two-interval Forced-choice Task for Multisensory Comparisons
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Temporal regularity and stimulus control in multiple fixed interval schedules.

Estela B Nepomoceno1, André M Cravo1, Marcelo B Reyes1

  • 1Center for Mathematics, Computing and Cognition, Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC), São Bernardo do Campo, SP, Brazil.

Behavioural Processes
|December 18, 2019
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Temporal regularity, not visual cues, controls behavior in fixed interval schedules when training involves blocks of trials. This suggests temporal patterns overshadow external stimuli in timing tasks across species.

Keywords:
Fixed intervalOvershadowingPerformanceRatStimulus control

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral science
  • Animal behavior
  • Cognitive psychology

Background:

  • Environmental stimuli typically signal different time intervals in fixed interval schedules.
  • Temporal performance can be influenced by training order, with intermixed versus blocked trials affecting stimulus control.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how training conditions affect stimulus control in fixed interval schedules.
  • To determine if temporal regularities across trials can override stimulus control.

Main Methods:

  • Experiment I: Manipulated the number of consecutive trials of each fixed interval (FI) within training blocks.
  • Experiment II: Varied the number of FIs trained.

Main Results:

  • When trained in blocks of consecutive trials, temporal performance was controlled by temporal regularities across trials.
  • Visual stimuli signaling the FIs did not control temporal performance under blocked training conditions.
  • Temporal cues appeared to overshadow the visual stimuli.

Conclusions:

  • Blocked training in fixed interval schedules leads to control by temporal regularities, not external stimuli.
  • Temporal regularity is a dominant factor in controlling behavior in timing tasks, even across species.