Abstract
The acquisition, maintenance, and extinction of autoshaped responding in pigeons were studied under partial and continuous reinforcement. Five values of probability of reinforcement, ranging from .1 to 1.0, were combined factorially with five values of intertrial interval ranging from 15 to 250 sec for different groups. The number of trials required before autoshaped responding emerged varied inversely with the duration of the intertriai interval and probability of reinforcment, but partial reinforcement did not increase the number of reinforcers before acquisition. During maintained training, partial reinforcement increased the overall rate of responding. A temporal gradient of accelerated responding over the trial duration emerged during maintenance training for partial reinforcement groups, and was evident for all groups in extinction. Partial reinforcement groups responded more than continuous reinforcement groups over an equivalent number of trials in extinction. However, this partial-reinforcment extinction effect disappeared when examined in terms of the omission of “expected” reinforcers.
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Schwartz, B.Studies of reflexive and operant key pecks in the pigeon. Eastern Psychological Association, Symposium on Autoshaping and Conditioning Theory, 1976.
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Portions of the data from this experiment were reported by L. Farrell, at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, 1974. This research was supported by NSF Grants BG 34095 and BNS 76-01229 and Small Grant MH 25070 (J. Gibbon, Principal Investigator), and NSF Grant GB 30781 and NIH Grant HD 00930 (H. S. Terrace, Principal Investigator).
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Gibbon, J., Farrell, L., Locurto, C.M. et al. Partial reinforcement in autoshaping with pigeons. Animal Learning & Behavior 8, 45–59 (1980). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209729
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209729