Reinforcement omission on fixed-interval schedules

Abstract

EXPERIMENTS WITH PIGEONS AND RATS SHOWED THAT: (1) When a brief blackout was presented in lieu of reinforcement at the end of 25% of intervals on a fixed-interval 2-min schedule, response rate was reliably and persistently higher during the following 2-min intervals (omission effect). This effect was largely due to a decrease in time to first response after reinforcement omission. (2) When blackout duration was varied, within sessions, over the range 2 to 32 sec, time to first response was inversely related to the duration of the preceding blackout, for pigeons, and for rats during the first few sessions after the transition from FI 2-min to FI 2-min with reinforcement omission. Post-blackout pause was independent of blackout duration for rats at asymptote. These results were interpreted in terms of differential depressive effects of reinforcement and blackout on subsequent responding.