Abstract
Four pigeons were trained to discriminate between four stimuli. There were three stimuli correlated with reinforced responding and one stimulus correlated with nonreinforced responding. Stimuli were compounds of form (either square or triangle) and background color (either red or green) projected on the response key. Compound stimuli were constructed in such a way that some components of the form-color compound stimulus were more frequently associated with reinforced responding than other components. Results showed that the compound stimulus formed of components most frequently associated with reinforced responding did not consistently control a higher response rate than other stimuli less frequently associated with reinforcement. This finding raises the question of the importance of the stimulus restrictions placed on the investigation of the response summation phenomenon.
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References
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This report is based on a thesis submitted by the author in partial fulfillment of MS requirements at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois.
Donald Meltzer sponsors this paper and takes full editorial responsibiltiy for its content.
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Hamm, R.J. A test for response summation with key-projected stimuli. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 9, 40–42 (1977). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336922
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336922