Serial properties of behavior and their chemical modification

Certain features of operant behavior that are sensitive to the adverse effects of chemical exposure can be obscured by exclusive experimental reliance on global measures such as response rate. Temporal patterning of behavior is the clearest example. Reinforcement schedules studied in behavioral pharmacology and toxicology reveal novel consequences of chemical treatment when subjected to analyses of their temporal and serial properties. Fixed-ratio performance, for example, undergoes not only changes in response rate, but also displays distinctive shifts in inter-response time patterning, changes in the interresponse time distribution, and deterioration in what might be termed the cohesiveness of the ratio. Variable-interval performance also may change in distinctive ways that produce altered response patterning without marked changes in rate. Sequential dependencies, as measured by techniques of time series analysis, may also reveal effects not reflected by response rates. Spaced responding and autoregressive schedules provide examples. The serial and temporal properties alluded to above can be described and analyzed by a variety of quantitative techniques that also yield information of theoretical interest.     

American Education in the 1980s

The views presented are the authors’ own, and do not represent the official position of the National Institute of Education.     

Tests of a principle of reflex modification: Modification of the human eyeblink-reflex is independent of the intensity of the reflex-eliciting stimulus

The human airpuff-elicited reflexive eyeblink, like the startle reflex of rats and pigeons, occurs with either reduced amplitude or latency when a brief auditory stimulus precedes the reflex-eliciting event by an appropriate lead interval. In common with the overt startle reflex of lower animals, the degree of inhibition or latency reduction of an airpuff-elicited eyeblink in human adults proved to be independent of the intensity of the eyeblink-eliciting airpuff. This finding supports the principle that the amount of a given reflex modification effect (whether latency or amplitude reduction) is determined by the parameters and lead time of the modifying stimulus and not by those of the reflex-eliciting event.