EFFECTS OF FREQUENCY AND MAGNITUDE OF REINFORCEMENT ON HUMAN CHOICE BEHAVIOR: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

Abstract

The present work was designed to test a new procedure for the study of human choice performance. In Experiment 1, 66 participants were submitted to a choice task involving concurrent variable interval, variable-interval schedules (conc VI VI) with a different relative reinforcement frequency assigned to each subject, and with three different groups differing in absolute reinforcement frequency programmed by both schedules. Each group was exposed to the same relative reinforcement values programmed by the schedules of the concurrent pair. In Experiment 2, 80 participants were submitted to a choice task involving concurrent equal variable interval, variable-interval schedules (conc VI VI) with a different relative reinforcement magnitude assigned to each subject, and with three different groups differing in absolute reinforcement magnitude programmed by both schedules. Each group was exposed to the same relative reinforcement values programmed by the schedules of the concurrent pair. In both experiments each participant worked in a single experimental condition. Group data used to compute the parameters of the generalized matching equation, showed low coefficients of determination. Despite that, the parameter that measures sensitivity of behavior to variations in reinforcement parameters varied orderly and systematically, indicating the effect of absolute reinforcer parameters. Key-words: absolute frequency of reinforcement, relative frequency of reinforcement, absolute magnitude of reinforcement, relative magnitude of reinforcement, concurrent schedules, humans.