Reinforcement accumulation and collateral behavior in humans
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Abstract
An accumulation procedure with humans was evaluated. Each click to an accumulation square, presented on the display of the computer, resulted in an access period to a video (the reinforcer) which could be collected with an obtained response in another square. The video could be reproduced by clicking on a third square. With this procedure, the effects of a 20 or 40 s delay between the accumulation and obtained responses were evaluated, with or without a collateral operandum added to the procedure. It was found that for the participants with the “collateral” operandum available, the 20 s delay between responses resulted in higher accumulation responses than the 40 s delay; by contrast, for the participants without the “collateral” operandum present, there were more accumulation responses during the 40 s delay that in the 20 s delay. These outcomes were interpreted as congruent with the cost or effort hypothesis proposed by the research on accumulation with rats as subjects.