Abstract

DUARTE, Viviane Rosalie; MURARI, Silvia Cristiane; SERIO, Tereza Maria de Azevedo Pires  and  MICHELETTO, Nilza. Promoting variability of nose-poking response duration in rats. Temas psicol. [online]. 2005, vol.13, n.1, pp. 61-72. ISSN 1413-389X.

The production of variability through reinforcement contingent on response variation has established itself as a behavior analysis research area. The present work’s goal was to examine the production of variability through reinforcement contingent upon a continuous dimension of the response: response duration. Three water deprived Mc Cowley rats served as subjects. Subjects were first exposed to a response differentiation condition to establish a nose-poking response. The following conditions were (a) reinforcement of response variability (lag 5), (b) reinforcement of response stereotypy, and (c) intermittent reinforcement of response duration, when the distribution of reinforcement obtained on the first variability condition was replicated, but without the contingency between response variability and reinforcement. Results showed that variability of response duration may be controlled by its consequences. Nevertheless, the degree of variability was different among subjects.

Keywords : Variability; Response differentiation; Response duration.

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