ABSTRACT
Atualmente é bastante comum, nas discussões teóricas sobre Análise do Comportamento, mencionar a"seleção pelas consequências" como um modo causal específico e como um esquema integrador dadisciplina com a biologia evolutiva. Contudo, falar de "seleção" no contexto do reforçamento operanteconstitui claramente um discurso analógico ou metafórico. Esta nota teórica tem três objetivos principais:primeiro, clarificar as condições nas quais uma analogia desta natureza pode ser aceita ou não; segundo,resumir e simplificar os argumentos de Tonneau e Sokolowski (2000, 2001 ) contrários à analogia entrereforçamento operante e seleção natural; e finalmente, examinar se desenvolvimentos recentes nadisciplina refutaram as conclusões negativas destes autores(AU)
Subject(s)
CerebrumABSTRACT
A group of 15 college students was exposed to repeated trials of a task in which money was available for choosing among three colors (blue, red, and green). The amount of winning tokens for each color was varied across phases to test whether group distribution would track the ratio of winning tokens between patches. Confirming previous reports on ideal free performance in humans, group choice proved sensitive to the available resources but tended to undermatch the ratio of winning tokens. The difference-equalization rule of Sokolowski, Tonneau, and Freixa i Baqué [Psychonom. Bull. Rev. 6 (1999) 157] gave a satisfactory fit to the data.
Subject(s)
Choice Behavior , Reward , Social Behavior , Token Economy , Humans , StudentsABSTRACT
After training under a variable-interval 60-s schedule of reinforcement, four rats were exposed to 30-min extinction tests, which occurred either at the start or at the end of the session (each session being 50-min long). Response rate in extinction decreased when the extinction test occurred at the end of the session, but first increased and then decreased when the extinction test occurred at the start of the session. Consistent with other recent results, this finding suggests that some variable, other than reinforcement, contributes to early-session increases in responding.
ABSTRACT
How the distribution of resources affects the spatial distribution of animals is a central concern of behavioral ecology. One influential model relating population dynamics to individual foraging behavior is that of ideal free distribution (Fretwell & Lucas, 1970). This model assumes foragers of equal competitive abilities, moving freely from one habitat to another, the choices made by each individual subject are supposed to equalize gains across habitats. The resulting distribution at the group level, or ideal free distribution, has been tested with various animal species. Here we report an experimental test with human subjects competing for money. The results approximate those predicted by the ideal free model, the degree of approximation being consistent with that obtained in other species. This similarity of results supports the application of behavioral ecology models to humanperformance.
Subject(s)
Competitive Behavior , Environment , Statistical Distributions , Humans , Reinforcement, PsychologyABSTRACT
Although it has repeatedly been demonstrated that pigeons, as well as other species, will often choose a variable schedule of reinforcement over an equivalent (or even richer) fixed schedule, the exact nature of that controlling relation has yet to be fully assessed. In this study pigeons were given repeated choices between concurrently available fixed-ratio and variable-ratio schedules. The fixed-ratio requirement (30 responses) was constant throughout the experiment, whereas the distribution of individual ratios making up the variable-ratio schedule changed across phases: The smallest and largest of these components were varied gradually, with the mean variable-ratio requirement constant at 60 responses. The birds' choices of the variable-ratio schedule tracked the size of the smallest variable-ratio component. A minimum variable-ratio component at or near 1 produced strong preference for the variable-ratio schedule, whereas increases in the minimum variable-ratio component resulted in reduced preference for the variable-ratio schedule. The birds' behavior was qualitatively consistent with Mazur's (1984) hyperbolic model of delayed reinforcement and could be described as approximate maximizing with respect to reinforcement value.