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Published November 1999 | public
Journal Article

Satiation, capacity, and within-session responding

Abstract

Responding may change substantially over the course of a session (McSweeney, Hinson, & Cannon, 1996). The role of satiation in this effect was investigated in three experiments. Experiment 1 showed that the capacity of pigeons to consume milo over a 1-hr period was relatively stable across three different methods of measurement. In Experiment 2, pigeons were divided into two groups that differed in their capacity based on one of those measures. Key pecking was then reinforced under a variable-interval 30-s schedule with hopper durations of 2 or 5 s. According to the satiation hypothesis, subjects with small capacities should satiate faster and therefore show greater decreases in food-reinforced responding than would subjects with larger capacities. The results confirmed this prediction and showed that the magnitudes of within-session decreases were better predicted by the amount an animal consumed relative to its capacity than by absolute amount alone. In Experiment 3, each pigeon was prefed 0, 5, 15, or 25 g of milo prior to each session. Consistent with the satiation hypothesis, increases in prefeeding produced lower overall response rates in the smaller capacity subjects than in the larger capacity subjects at each level of prefeeding. These experiments demonstrate the importance of a new variable in the control of behavior, and provide a recommended technique for its measurement.

Additional Information

© 1999 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. Received March 8, 1999. Final acceptance July 31, 1999. Article first published online: 26 Feb 2013. This research was supported by NSF Grant IBN9408022 and NIMH Grant K05MH01293 to the second author. We thank Krista Rolands and Jennifer Cioni for their assistance in collecting and analyzing data.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 26, 2023