INCREASING AND SIGNALING BACKGROUND REINFORCEMENT - EFFECT ON THE FOREGROUND RESPONSE-REINFORCER RELATION

Herrnstein's (1970) hyperbolic matching equation describes the relatio nship between response rate and reinforcement rate. It has two estimat ed parameters, k and Re. According to one interpretation, k measures m otor performance and Re measures the efficacy of the reinforcer mainta ining responding relative to background sources of reinforcement. Expe riment I tested this interpretation of the Re parameter by observing t he effect of adding and removing an additional source of reinforcement to the context. Using a within-session procedure, estimates of Re wer e obtained from the response-reinforcer relation over a series of seve n variable-interval schedules. A second, concurrently available variab le-interval schedule of reinforcement was added and then removed from the context. Results showed that when the alternative was added to the context, the value of Re increased by 107 reinforcers per hour; this approximated the 91 reinforcers per hour obtained from this schedule. Experiment 2 investigated the effects of signaling background reinforc ement on k and Re. The signal decreased Re, but did not have a systema tic effect on k. In general, the results supported Herrnstein's interp retation that in settings with one experimenter-controlled reinforceme nt source, Re indexes the strength of the reinforcer maintaining respo nding relative to uncontrolled background sources of reinforcement.