REINFORCEMENT CONTINGENCIES MAINTAINING COLLATERAL RESPONDING UNDER A DRL SCHEDULE

Two‐key conjunctive schedules were studied with one key (food key) under a differential‐reinforcement‐of‐low‐rate 20‐sec schedule, while the consequences of responding on another key (collateral key) were varied. When food depended not only upon a food‐key interresponse time in excess of 20 sec, but also upon the occurrence of one or more collateral‐key responses during the food‐key interresponse time, the rate of collateral‐key responding was low and food‐key interresponse times rarely exceeded 20 sec. When collateral‐key responses could produce a discriminative stimulus correlated with the availability of food under the DRL schedule, the discriminative stimulus functioned as a conditioned reinforcer to maintain higher rates of collateral‐key responding, and the spacing of food‐key responses increased. If the occurrence of the discriminative stimulus was independent of collateral‐key responses, the rate of collateral‐key responding was again low, but the spacing of food‐key responses was still controlled by the discriminative stimulus. Both the conditioned reinforcer and the explicit reinforcement contingency could maintain collateral‐key responding, but the adventitious correlation between collateral‐key responses and the delivery of food could not maintain very much collateral‐key responding. The pattern of responding on the food‐key was determined to a much greater extent by the correlation between the discriminative stimulus and the delivery of food than by the pattern of responding on the collateral key. 1969 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior