Acquisition with delayed reinforcement under combinations of response dependent and independent reinforcement

Abstract

Experiments on steady-state responding have shown that response rate decrease as the proportion of independent reinforcement, mixed with response-dependent reinforcement, increase. This study attempted to replicate these findings during the acquisition of a new response. A 3X3 factorial design was used. One variable was the combination of reinforcement dependence and independence, set at 25, 50 and 75 % response-independent reinforcement. The other variable was the duration of an unsignaled reinforcement delay, set at 6, 12 or 24s. Three rats were assigned to each combination of independent variables. Analyses of variance showed that, while delay of reinforcement did not have a systematic effect, the number of sessions for acquisition was smaller and the response rates higher under leaner proportions of response independent reinforcement. These results show that the phenomenon is general during the maintenance and the acquisition of a new response and that the response-reinforcer dependency is crucial for both phases.