Journal Articles
Abstract:
Three experiments with pigeons studied the
relation between
time and rate measures of behavior under
conditions of
changing preference. Experiment 1 studied a
concurrent-chain schedule with
random-interval initial links
and fixed-interval terminal links; Experiment
2 studied a
multiple chained random-interval
fixed-interval schedule;
and Experiment 3 studied simple concurrent
random-interval
random-interval schedule. In Experiment 1,
and to a lesser
extent in the other two experiments,
session-average
initial-link wait-time differences were
linearly related to
ses-sion-average response-rate differences.
In Experiment
1, and to a lesser extent Experiment 3, ratios of
session-average initial-link wait times and
response rates
were related by a power func-tion. The
weaker relations
between wait and response measures in
Experiment 2 appear to
be due to the absence on competition between
responses. In
Experiments 1 and 2, initial-link changes
lagged behind
terminal-link changes. These findings may
have implications
for the rela-tions between fixed- and
variable-interval
procedures and suggest that more attention
should be paid to
temporal measures in studies of free-operant
choice.