Danson, C., & Creed, T. (1970).
Rate of response as a visual social stimulus.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
13, 233-242.
In Exp. 1, a high rate of responding (chain pulling) of a
stimulus monkey was established as a visual positive
discriminative stimulus for the operant behavior (bar pressing)
of an observer monkey. The terminal performance of the observer
under conditions in which a high rate of response of the stimulus
monkey alternated in a variable temporal arrangement with a zero
rate of response of the stimulus monkey (negative discriminative
stimulus) was essentially the same as when nonbehavioral stimuli
are correlated with the availability of reinforcement. By
manipulating the schedule of reinforcement to change the rate of
responding of the stimulus subject without changing its rate of
reinforcement, Exp. 2 showed that the effective behavioral
stimulus for the observer was the rate of chain pulling by the
stimulus subject. A novel intermediate rate of responding by the
stimulus monkey resulted in an intermediate rate (generalization)
on the part of the observer during an extinction test. These
experiments demonstrated that the rate of responding of one
organism can function as a discriminative stimulus to control the
rate of responding of another organism; and that the rate of
responding is similar to other physical stimuli in terms of
discrimination and generalization.