FIXED‐INTERVAL PERFORMANCE: THE DYNAMICS OF BEHAVIOR AND THE INTERVAL LENGTH

Abstract

Postreinforcement pauses from successive intervals under various fixed‐interval schedules (ranging from 15 seconds to 480 seconds in length) were subjected to lag‐1 autocorrelation analysis. Results from both rats and pigeons suggested that there was a consistent tendency for pause values in successive intervals to be weakly positively related. This tendency did not appear to change systematically with interval length and was exhibited both when the reinforcer magnitude was constant and when it was variable at different interval values. The findings do not support suggestions that the dynamic properties of performance under fixed‐interval schedules vary systematically with interval length, and are in the opposite direction from some previous findings suggesting that measures of behavior (such as post‐reinforcement pause length or number of responses) in successive intervals are inversely related.