Compounding of discriminative stimuli from the same and different sensory modalities.
Rats' responding was maintained by fixed-interval schedules of reinforcement in the presence of a tone or two separate lights. The lights were either of low, moderate, or high intensity. Compounds of these single discriminative stimuli each maintained a greater frequency of response than did the single stimuli, and the compound composed of stimuli from different sensory modalities (light+tone) maintained a greater level of responding than did the compound composed of stimuli from the same sensory modality (light+light). Combining lights of different intensity had no differential effect on responding. However, in the second experiment, a compound composed of a light and a tone, each of greater intensity than the light and tone of another compound, initially maintained a higher frequency of response, demonstrating intensity effects during stimulus compounding when the increase in intensity occurs through the component stimuli. This intensity effect, however, was only transitory.
D000818:Animals; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D008027:Light; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D012055:Reinforcement Schedule; D013016:Sound; D014796:Visual Perception