West Virginia University, USA.
J Exp Anal Behav. 2013 Mar;99(2):199-210. doi: 10.1002/jeab.13. Epub 2013 Jan 14.
Key pecking of 4 pigeons was studied under a two-component multiple schedule in which food deliveries were arranged according to a fixed and a variable interfood interval. The percentage of response-dependent food in each component was varied, first in ascending (0, 10, 30, 70 and 100%) and then in descending orders, in successive conditions. The change in response rates was positively related to the percentage of response-dependent food in each schedule component. Across conditions, positively accelerated and linear patterns of responding occurred consistently in the fixed and variable components, respectively. These results suggest that the response-food dependency determines response rates in periodic and aperiodic schedules, and that the temporal distribution of food determines response patterns independently of the response-food dependency. Running rates, but not postfood pauses, also were positively related to the percentage of dependent food in each condition, in both fixed and variable components. Thus, the relation between overall response rate and the percentage of dependent food was mediated by responding that occurred after postfood pausing. The findings together extend previous studies wherein the dependency was either always present or absent, and increase the generality of the effects of variations in the response-food dependency from aperiodic to periodic schedules.
四只鸽子的关键啄食行为在一个双成分多时间表下进行研究，其中食物的分配是根据固定和可变的间隔时间来安排的。在连续的条件下，每个成分中反应依赖型食物的百分比先递增（0、10、30、70 和 100%），然后再递减。反应率的变化与每个时间表成分中反应依赖型食物的百分比呈正相关。在各种条件下，固定和可变成分中分别一致地出现了正加速和线性的反应模式。这些结果表明，反应-食物依赖性决定了周期性和非周期性时间表中的反应率，而食物的时间分布独立于反应-食物依赖性决定了反应模式。在固定和可变成分中，跑步速度，但不是食物后的停顿，也与每个条件中依赖食物的百分比呈正相关。因此，整体反应率和依赖食物百分比之间的关系是由食物后停顿后的反应介导的。这些发现扩展了以前的研究，其中依赖性要么总是存在，要么不存在，并增加了反应-食物依赖性变化从非周期性到周期性时间表的影响的普遍性。
