BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS AND WITHIN‐SESSION CHANGES IN RESPONDING

Abstract

Pigeons and rats responded on fixed‐ratio schedules with requirements ranging from 5 to 120 responses. Consistent with past results from several schedules and procedures, responding usually changed systematically within experimental sessions. The within‐session changes were usually larger and were less symmetrical around the middle of the session for schedules that provided higher, rather than lower, rates of reinforcement. These results suggest that similar variables contribute to within‐session changes in responding under different schedules. When an economic demand function was fit to the data, the intensity and elasticity of demand for food and the percentage of the variance accounted for decreased within sessions, although the trend for elasticity did not reach statistical significance for pigeons. These results suggest that relatively short sessions should be used to study economic demand in open economies and that demand may differ at different times in a session and in sessions of different lengths. Within‐session changes in intensity, but not necessarily elasticity, of demand are consistent with behavioral economic theories.