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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Investigating Behavioral Dynamics With A Fixed-Time Extinction Schedule And Linear Analysis, William L. Palya, Don Walter, Robert Kessel, Robert Lucke
Investigating Behavioral Dynamics With A Fixed-Time Extinction Schedule And Linear Analysis, William L. Palya, Don Walter, Robert Kessel, Robert Lucke
Research, Publications & Creative Work
This paper describes the behavioral adaptation observed for 16 pigeons responding to a step transition in the reinforcement rate in a repeated-trial design. Within each trial, following exposure for a fixed period to a variable-interval schedule, there was an unsignaled change in the schedule to extinction. The step transition allowed an experimental test of the applicability of a linear analysis to steady-state dynamic behavior. The computations required for this test yielded, as an intermediate result, transfer functions for each of the 16 birds from 1 mHz to 256 mHz. The transfer functions obtained show greater responsiveness to lower frequencies (i.e., …
Bipolar Control In Fixed Interfood Intervals, William L. Palya
Bipolar Control In Fixed Interfood Intervals, William L. Palya
Research, Publications & Creative Work
The ability of stimuli correlated with successive periods in a fixed interfood interval to support a response that produced or removed them was examined using pigeons. The degree to which those correlated stimuli elicited directed key pecks was also obtained. Stimuli early in the interval functioned as negative reinforcers, and stimuli late in the interval functioned as positive reinforcers. Stimuli correlated with successively later portions of the second half of the interval supported successively higher rates of elicited pecking and, with the exception of the final stimulus, supported successively higher rates of stimulus production. Stimuli in successively earlier portions of …
Dynamics In The Fine Structure Of Schedule-Controlled Behavior, William L. Palya
Dynamics In The Fine Structure Of Schedule-Controlled Behavior, William L. Palya
Research, Publications & Creative Work
The variability in the behavioral equilibrium established by six basic schedules was characterized. The measures were the pause preceding the first response in each interreinforcement interval; the mean rate of responding in each interreinforcement interval; and the relative frequency of each interresponse time. The temporal windows ranged across the 780-session exposure, across a session, and across the interreinforcement intcrval. A display of individual intcrresponse times as a function of time in the interreinforcemcnt interval indicated clear recurrent responding at somewhat less than 3 Hz in every bird, even after extended exposure to a schedule and regardless of the contingency. No …
Serial Conditioning As A Function Of Stimulus, Response, And Temporal Dependencies, William L. Palya, Rick A. Bevins
Serial Conditioning As A Function Of Stimulus, Response, And Temporal Dependencies, William L. Palya, Rick A. Bevins
Research, Publications & Creative Work
Six experiments were used to examine the effects of explicit response, stimulus, and temporal dependencies on responding in an interfood interval. The first two experiments demonstrated that 10- segment 60-s interfood clocks controlled similar distributions of key pecking in pigeons regardless of whether response-reinforcement contiguity was required, allowed, or precluded. The third and fourth experiments found that in the absence of an explicit response-reinforcement dependency, systematic explicit stimuli in an interfood interval were sufficient to establish and maintain the characteristic distribution of key pecking and that an interval without an explicit clock failed to establish or maintain key pecking. The …
Sign-Tracking With An Interfood Clock, William L. Palya
Sign-Tracking With An Interfood Clock, William L. Palya
Research, Publications & Creative Work
Food was presented to pigeons, irrespective of their behavior. The fixed 60-s interfood interval was segmented into ten 6-s periods, each signaled by a distinctive stimulus color, ordered by wavelength. This "interfood clock" reliably generated and maintained successively higher rates of key pecking at stimuli successively closer to food. Under extinction, key pecking ceased. When the standard stimulus sequence was changed to a different sequence for each bird, accelerated responding again emerged and was sustained under each of the new color sequences. However, responding was neither maintained nor acquired when each successive interfood interval provided a different random sequence of …