Cerutti, D. T. & Staddon, J. E. R. (2004).
Time and rate measures in choice transitions.
Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
81, 135-154.
Three experiments with pigeons studied the relation between time and rate
measures of behavior under conditions of changing preference. Experiment 1 studied a concurrent chain schedule with random-interval initial links and
fixed-interval terminal links; Experiment 2 studied a multiple chained random-
interval fixed-interval schedule; and Experiment 3 studied simple concurrent
random-interval random-interval schedules. In Experiment 1, and to a lesser
extent in the other two experiments, session-average initial-link wait-time
differences were linearly related to session-average response-rate differences.
In Experiment 1, and to a lesser extent in Experiment 3, ratios of session-
average initial-link wait times and response rates were related by a power
function. The weaker relations between wait and response measures in Experiment
2 appear to be due to the absence of competition between responses. In
Experiments 1 and 2, initial-link changes lagged behind terminal-link changes.
These findings may have implications for the relations between fixed- and
variable-interval procedures and suggest that more attention should be paid to
temporal measures in studies of free-operant choice.
Key words: choice, changeover time, interresponse time, interval
schedules, conditioned reinforcement, wait time, key peck, pigeons