Bouts, Changeovers, and Units of Operant Behavior

Responding of various types occurs as bouts of activity separated by pauses. Deprivation and reinforcement affect the tendency to initiate and persist engaging in bouts but have little effect on performance once engaged. Such a two-state conception encourages time-based measurement even when the response is recorded as a brief, discrete event like a lever press. The two-state conception also emphasizes that response rate, as commonly calculated, is a mixture of different units controlled by different sets of variables. Focusing on the components of the two states--especially bout-initiations (or changeovers)--might help solve some puzzles presented by total response-rate data and might help clarify how schedules of reinforcement affect response rate.