Applied Behavior Analysis Commons^™

A Rat Model Of Gambling Behavior And Its Extinction: Effects Of "Win" Probability On Choice In A Concurrent-Chains Procedure, David N. Kearns, Maria A. Gomez-Serrano

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

Two experiments examined the effects of varying the probability of “wins” within a rat model of gambling. On a concurrent-chains procedure, rats could choose between a “work” lever on which a fixed 20 responses produced a food pellet or a “gamble” lever, where on some trials (“wins”) only one response was required for reinforcement while on other trials 40 responses were required. Despite the fact that the work lever was always associated with the higher overall reinforcement rate, rats frequently chose to respond on the gamble lever. The frequency with which rats chose the gamble lever varied as a function …