Response restriction, reinforcement, and punishment : an application of Premack's theory to multiple schedules

The purpose of the present experiments was to apply Premack's theory of reinforcement to multiple schedule performance. In these experiments, multiple schedules were viewed as a series of stimulusdefined "situations," in the sense that Baum (l973) used the term. Transitions between these "situations" were investigated in terms of their ability to reinforce or punish responding in the preceding "situation" (component). The work of Baum (1973, 1974) and Premack (l965, 197l) suggested that transitions from a low valued component to a higher valued component would cause an increase in responding in the low valued component, and that transitions from a high valued component to a low valued one would cause a decrease in responding in the high valued component.

The work of Eisenberger, Karpman, and Trattner (l967) suggested that a decrease in the duration of a component might cause an increase in the value of responding during that component, and that the increase in value resulting from decreased component duration might be sufficient to produce the transition effects described above.

Results similar to these were reported by Malone, McNally, Hinson, and Denny (l976), and by Hinson, Malone, McNally, and Rowe (l978). The transition effects found here failed to replicate those reported by Hinson et al., and this failure was attributed to the fact that timeout periods were used to isolate components, so that subsequent transitions could be studied. These timeout periods did not act as "spacers," but rather as extinction components. Recent data showing that sequential effects bridge timeout periods of the duration used here means that effects of both the preceding and the following components were present in these experiments, making any interpretation of the effects of transitions in terms of reinforcement and punishment impossible.

The clearest result of these studies was the effect of component duration: : a decrease in the duration of a multiple schedule VI component caused an increase in response rate in that component. This increase in response rate occurred whether or not the duration of another component was increased so that reinforcements per session remained constant, although such a compensatory increase seemed to strengthen the effect. Increases in response rate as a function of shortened component duration were also found in FI schedules. All of the increases in response rate were found in spite of the fact that fewer reinforcements per session were delivered in the shorter duration component.

These increases in response rate were not due to an artifactual weighting of positive local contrast. Experiment IV showed that when subjects are given a choice between a previously shorter and a previously longer component, they prefer to respond to the previously shorter component. These data indicate that shorter duration components in some ways act as though associated with higher rates of reinforcement. The present application of restriction of access to multiple schedules represents an unsuspected setting for studying restriction. The fact that the present data indicate a value increase when the activity which is restricted is the opportunity to respond in one

component of a multiple schedule suggests that restriction of access should be counted as a basic motivational variable.