Behavioral variability: The production of variability of response duration

Abstract

The experiment investigated if variability of responses' duration can be controlled by consequences and discriminative stimuli, and if variability leveIs produced on the duration of a response can influence variability leveis00 the duration of responses with a different topography. Pour rats were exposed to five experimental conditions and two probe tests: (1) Variability: reinforcement of responses, that regarding their duration, were considered as different from the previous responses; (2) Repetitioru reinforcement of responses, that regarding their duration, were considered as responses of the same class; (3) Stimulus control 1:multiple schedules with variability and repetition of lever pressing responses for two subjects, and nose poking for the other two; (4) Probe test 1: response lever was replaced by a nose poke response key for the first two subjects, and the nose poke response key was replaced by response lever for the others; the same stimulus that were presented during the multiple schedule condition were presented, response duration was measured; (5) Stimulus control2: multiple schedule with variability and repetition of lever pressing responses for the subjects that were exposed to the multiple schedule of nose poking responses, and multiple schedule with variability and repetition of nose poking responses for the subjects that were exposed to the multiple schedule of lever pressing responses; (6) Reversal procedure of the multiple schedules; (7) Probe test 2. Results indicated that variability of the duration of a response is controlled by its consequences and by discriminative stimuli. Results of the probe tests did not indicated the extension of stimulus control from one response to the other.