Rate of a maintained operant as a function of temporal position within a session

Abstract

McSweeney and her colleagues (e.g., McSweeney, Hatfield, & Allen, 1990) have demonstrated reliable, large magnitude rate changes in maintained operants within daily sessions under a wide variety of reinforcement schedules. The present paper examined the role of schedule of reinforcement, reinforcement rate, and total amount of food access in determining those within-session rate changes. When median rates across birds were considered, all procedures resulted in a brief period of an increasing rate, followed by a modest rate loss across the major portion of the session. However, not all individuals exhibited that pattern. When the amount of food access per session was limited by lower reinforcement rates, shorter sessions, or shorter reinforcement durations, the magnitude of the withinsession rate change was reduced from that occurring without those constraints. Additionally, under the conditions that produced strong within-session rate changes, the magnitude of the within-session rate loss was correlated with the bird’s body weight. These effects are consistent with what is typically labeledsatiation.