EFFECTS OF A CONCURRENT TASK ON FIXED‐INTERVAL RESPONDING IN HUMANS1
- 1 July 1963
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
- Vol. 6 (3), 431-436
- https://doi.org/10.1901/jeab.1963.6-431
Abstract
Subjects pressed a telegraph key to illuminate a meter dial on which pointer deflections appeared at fixed intervals. Upon detecting a deflection they were required to press another key to reset the pointer to zero. This detecting and resetting operation reinforced the behavior of pressing the light-flashing key (i.e., the observing responses). The usual pattern of responding on the light-flashing key was a long pause following the reinforcement and an abrupt transition to a steady response rate toward the end of the interval. When the subjects were required to perform a concurrent subtraction task, the pattern of responding changed in varying degrees, ranging from complete loss of typical fixed-interval behavior to a slight shortening of the post-reinforcement pause. These effects were attributed to the disruption of the self-produced verbal chains (counting or reciting) that ordinarily govern human behavior on this schedule.Keywords
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