Notes that the demand curve used in economics may be analogous to the function relating
the number of reinforcements obtained on a schedule of reinforcement to some parameter of …

The problem of maintaining independence between response rates and reinforcement
probabilities when determining the effect of varying the response‐reinforcement contingency …

College students' presses on a telegraph key were occasionally reinforced by light onsets in
the presence of which button presses (consummatory responses) produced points later …

The concept of contingency is central to theoretical discussions of learned behavior and in
the application of learning research to problems of social significance. This paper reviews …

The general process view of learning, which guided research into learning for the first half of
this century, has come under attack in recent years from several quarters. One form of …

Twenty undergraduate students were exposed to single response‐independent schedules
of reinforcer presentation, fixed‐time or variable‐time, each with values of 30 and 60 s. The …

In recounting his early research agenda, Skinner (1956) described the serendipitous event
that led to the discovery of operant extinction curves. The pellet dispenser on his apparatus …

Reinforcement of variability may help to explain operant learning. Three groups of rats were
reinforced, in different phases, whenever the following target sequences of left (L) and right …

Three pigeons responded on several tandem variable‐interval fixed‐time schedules in
which the value of the fixed‐time component was varied to assess the effects of different …

In three experiments we investigated the effect on the performance of thirsty rats of varying
the instrumental contingency between lever pressing and the delivery of a saccharin …