Conditioning Response Variability

Variability of performance was conditioned in three rats by making reinforcement contingent upon two successive inter-response times or post-reinforcement pauses falling into different temporal class intervals. Class intervals were systematically varied over a range of 1.0 to 20.0 sec. Inter-response time and post-reinforcement pause-time distributions, in terms of absolute frequency, were obtained at each interval value. All rats met the variability-of-performance requirement by regular alternation between short and long pauses.