Amount Of Reinforcement And Consummatory Time In Human Learning

Abstract

An experiment was carried out to investigate the effects of magnitude of reward and consummatory time on the choice behaviour of human subjects. Analysis of the data revealed: (1) choice behaviour was a function of both magnitude of reward and consummatory time; (2) the effects of these two variables differed depending upon the period of training under consideration; (3) short consummatory times resulted in highly variable behaviour. The results were discussed in relation to theories derived from experiments using infrahuman subjects.