Effects of Reinforcement History on Behavioral Variability

• Autor(a) principal: Leite Hunziker, Maria Helena
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Capelossi Caramori, Flávia, da Silva, Adriana Pinto, de Souza Barba, Lourenço
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Psicologia (Universidade de Brasília. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/revistaptp/article/view/17320
• topic: Variabilidade comportamental; Aprendizagem de seqüências; História de reforçamento; Behavioral variability; Learning sequences; Reinforcement history

This study asked whether behavioral variability is influenced by the previous reinforcement experience. Ratswere exposed to schedules of reinforcement for sequences of four bar-press responses (right bar -R and left bar -L). In the CRFschedule, every sequence was reinforced. In the other schedules, reinforcement was intermittent, being contingent upon sequencevariation (VAR) or independent of it (ACO). Variability was measured by the distribution of R or L responses withinthe sequence. Half of the animals were exposed to the order CRF-VAR-CRF-ACO-CRF-VAR (group I) and half to CRFACO-CRF-VAR-CRF-ACO (group II). All subjects showed the highest variability under VAR. During CRF and ACO contingencies,no variability was observed if these contingencies preceeded VAR, but the levels of variability was intermediate ifthey followed VAR. These results suggested that behavior variability is controlled by reinforcement experience.