TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of lever height on the microstructure of operant behavior
AU - Jiménez, Ángel Andrés
AU - Sanabria, Federico
AU - Cabrera, Felipe
N1 - Funding Information:
Á. A. Jiménez was supported by a Fulbright-García Robles grant from the U.S. Department of State. Conacyt CB-2012/180443 supported F. Cabrera. The authors would like to thank Denisse Ochoa and Saul Rubio for their valuable help carrying out the experiment.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2017/7
Y1 - 2017/7
N2 - The effect of lever height on the temporal organization of reinforced lever pressing was examined. Lever pressing was reinforced on a variable-interval 30-s schedule in rats, with lever height manipulated across six successive conditions. Parameters of the organization of responses in bouts (bout length distribution, bout-initiation rate, within-bout rate, and sequential dependency) were estimated. These estimates revealed (1) a qualitative change in the distribution of IRTs and their sequential dependency when the lever was too high, (2) a mixture of geometrically-distributed bout lengths at all lever heights, and (3) longer bouts at lower and intermediate lever heights. In accordance with previous data, these findings suggest that lower and intermediate lever heights favored lever pressing with longer bout lengths, faster bout initiation, faster within-bout responding, and more sequentially dependent timing. These results underscore the disociability of motoric capacity in operant performance, and may reflect the influence of the body size on the temporal organization of the operant.
AB - The effect of lever height on the temporal organization of reinforced lever pressing was examined. Lever pressing was reinforced on a variable-interval 30-s schedule in rats, with lever height manipulated across six successive conditions. Parameters of the organization of responses in bouts (bout length distribution, bout-initiation rate, within-bout rate, and sequential dependency) were estimated. These estimates revealed (1) a qualitative change in the distribution of IRTs and their sequential dependency when the lever was too high, (2) a mixture of geometrically-distributed bout lengths at all lever heights, and (3) longer bouts at lower and intermediate lever heights. In accordance with previous data, these findings suggest that lower and intermediate lever heights favored lever pressing with longer bout lengths, faster bout initiation, faster within-bout responding, and more sequentially dependent timing. These results underscore the disociability of motoric capacity in operant performance, and may reflect the influence of the body size on the temporal organization of the operant.
KW - Affordance
KW - BERM
KW - Bout length
KW - Lever height
KW - Lever press
KW - Modeling
KW - Rats
KW - Variable-interval schedule
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U2 - 10.1016/j.beproc.2017.05.002
DO - 10.1016/j.beproc.2017.05.002
M3 - Article
C2 - 28499811
AN - SCOPUS:85019946303
SN - 0376-6357
VL - 140
SP - 181
EP - 189
JO - Behavioural processes
JF - Behavioural processes
ER -