title: Human choice under schedules of negative reinforcement.
abstract: The generalized matching equation provides a good description of response allocation in concurrent schedules of positive reinforcement in nonhumans as well as in humans. The present experiment was conducted to further investigate the allocation of responding under concurrent schedules of negative reinforcement (i.e., timeouts from pressing a force cell) in humans. Each of three participants was exposed to different reinforcement ratios (9:1, 1:1 and 1:9) in the terminal links of a concurrent-chains schedule of negative reinforcement. The allocation of responding under this schedule was well described by the generalized matching equation, for each participant. These results replicate previous findings obtained with nonhumans and humans under concurrent schedules of positive reinforcement. In addition, they extend the results reported by Alessandri and Rivière (2013) showing that human behavior maintained by timeouts from an effortful response is sensitive to changes in relative reinforcement ratios as well as relative delays of reinforcement.
authors.affiliation: University of Lille, CNRS, UMR 9193 - SCALab - Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, 59000 Lille, France. Electronic address: jerome.alessandri@univ-lille3.fr.
authors.forename: Jérôme
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Alessandri
authors.affiliation: Universidade de Brasília, Brazil.
authors.forename: Carlos R X
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Cançado
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000941:ethics*; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012055:Reinforcement Schedule; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology
keywords: Button pressing; Choice; Concurrent-chains schedule; Humans; Negative reinforcement; Timeout from force requirement