Lever displacmement under a variable ratio schedule and subsequent extinction.

Abstract

Compared with other schedules, both means and variabilities of lever displacement by rats under a VR-5 (variable-ratio) schedule were high. The finding that displacement distributions in VR correlated with extinction distributions supported a hypothesis of Schoenfeld. As a function of the ordinal number of the press following a reinforcement, no behavioral pattern emerged. No tendency to repeat a reinforced response existed, but there was, initially, a tendency to repeat a nonreinforced response, A number of differences between VR-5 and FR-5 (fixed-ratio) behavior not discernible from rate measure were noted.