The behavioral effects of some temporally defined schedules of reinforcement.

The differences in behavioral effects between interval and ratio reinforcement have been pointed out by several investigators (1, 6, 9, 15), and reveal themselves most clearly in comparisons of over-all response rates, temporal patterns of cumulative-response curves, and subsequent extinction responding. In view of the different procedures followed by the experimenter and these contrasting behavioral effects, most researchers have regarded the two categories as basically distinct.