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Human free-operant performance varies with a concurrent task: Probability learning without a task, and schedule-consistent with a task
- Source :
- Learning & Behavior
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Springer US, 2020.
-
Abstract
- Three experiments examined human rates and patterns of responding during exposure to various schedules of reinforcement with or without a concurrent task. In the presence of the concurrent task, performances were similar to those typically noted for nonhumans. Overall response rates were higher on medium-sized ratio schedules than on smaller or larger ratio schedules (Experiment 1), on interval schedules with shorter than longer values (Experiment 2), and on ratio compared with interval schedules with the same rate of reinforcement (Experiment 3). Moreover, bout-initiation responses were more susceptible to influence by rates of reinforcement than were within-bout responses across all experiments. In contrast, in the absence of a concurrent task, human schedule performance did not always display characteristics of nonhuman performance, but tended to be related to the relationship between rates of responding and reinforcement (feedback function), irrespective of the schedule of reinforcement employed. This was also true of within-bout responding, but not bout-initiations, which were not affected by the presence of a concurrent task. These data suggest the existence of two strategies for human responding on free-operant schedules, relatively mechanistic ones that apply to bout-initiation, and relatively explicit ones, that tend to apply to within-bout responding, and dominate human performance when other demands are not made on resources.
- Subjects :
- Response rate
Schedule
Reinforcement Schedule
Cognitive Neuroscience
media_common.quotation_subject
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Within-bout responding
050105 experimental psychology
Article
Task (project management)
Behavioral Neuroscience
Cognition
Humans
Animals
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology
Bout-initiation
Reinforcement
Function (engineering)
media_common
Probability learning
Schedules of reinforcement
05 social sciences
Contrast (statistics)
Rate of reinforcement
Interval (music)
Conditioning, Operant
Probability Learning
Psychology
human activities
Reinforcement, Psychology
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 15434508 and 15434494
- Volume :
- 48
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Learning & Behavior
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....fcc6020661fdfaf0ef9fcc18e125e1a1