Schedule-Induced Behavior

Description of the Strategy

Schedule-induced or adjunctive behavior, first reported by John Falk in 1961, is generally defined as excessive behavior produced by a schedule of intermittent reinforcement but not required by the schedule. Although several types of schedule-induced behavior have been reported in a wide variety of organisms, including drinking and air licking in rats, aggression in pigeons, and movement and eating in humans, the prototypical example of schedule-induced behavior is schedule-induced polydipsia (excessive drinking) in rats. In a standard experimental preparation, fooddeprived rats are fed small, 45 mg food pellets approximately once per minute in a Skinner box with water freely available. Over several sessions, rats gradually develop a robust stereotyped pattern of postfood water consumption, in which a drinking bout ...