Dougherty D M, Lewis P
Department of Psychology, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, USA.
Behav Processes. 1992;26(2-3):69-76. doi: 10.1016/0376-6357(92)90003-V. Epub 2002 Jun 3.
Using three horses we imvestigated responding on several concurrent variable-interval schedules. Each horse was first trained, using the method of successive approximations, to press a response lever with its upper lip. Following successful acquisition of the lip-press response, horses spent several days on pretraining schedules. These included a continuous reinforcement schedule and three variable-interval concurrent schedules: VI 15-sec VI 15-sec, VI 30-sec VI 30-sec, and VI 45-sec VI 45-sec. Horses were then exposed to the experimental sessions; sessions were conducted daily in the horse's home stall and lasted until 60 grain reinforcers had been received. All horses were exposed to five variable-interval schedules: VI 30-sec VI 90-sec, VI 45-sec VI 75-sec, VI 60-sec VI 60-sec, VI 75-sec VI 45-sec, and VI 90-sec VI 30-sec. Like previous experimenters, we found a close matching relationship between the horse's relative rates of responding and the relative rates of reinforcement. When each horse's data was fitted with a regression line, using the least squares method, more than 97% of the variance was accounted for. These results expand the generality of the matching law to include horses as well as providing some other information about the response characteristics of horses.
我们使用三匹马研究了它们在几个并发可变间隔强化程序中的反应。每匹马首先采用逐次逼近法进行训练，用其上唇按压一个反应杆。在成功习得唇压反应后，马在预训练程序上花费了几天时间。这些程序包括一个连续强化程序和三个可变间隔并发程序：VI 15秒 VI 15秒、VI 30秒 VI 30秒和VI 45秒 VI 45秒。然后让马接受实验阶段；实验每天在马厩中进行，持续到马获得60次谷物强化物。所有马都接受了五个可变间隔程序：VI 30秒 VI 90秒；VI 45秒 VI 75秒；VI 60秒 VI 60秒；VI 75秒 VI 45秒；以及VI 90秒 VI 30秒。和之前的实验者一样，我们发现马的相对反应率与相对强化率之间存在紧密的匹配关系。当使用最小二乘法为每匹马的数据拟合一条回归线时，超过97%的方差得到了解释。这些结果扩展了匹配定律的普遍性，使其涵盖了马，同时也提供了一些关于马的反应特征的其他信息。
