Running Head: PARTIAL REINFORCEMENT

The Effects of Partial Reinforcement on Virtual Laboratory Rats

Jacob Brown, Kyle Clements, Jake Dance, A. J. Griffin, Jesse Rhodes, and Jordan Sgro
Brigham Young University

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Abstract

Whether responding under a partial-reinforcement schedule prolongs subsequent extinction was

tested with six virtual rats in an experiment design that also involved rats that had been
conditioned under a continuous-reinforcement schedule. The results indicated that exposure to a
partial- reinforcement schedule produced greater resistance to extinction.
Keywords: operant conditioning, partial reinforcement, continuous reinforcement, virtual
rats, resistance to extinction

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The Effects of Partial Reinforcement on Virtual Laboratory Rats

Psychologists have attempted for centuries to understand and explain why organisms
behave as they do. B. F. Skinner, the 20th century radical behaviorist, asserted that observable
behavior was the only real basis for making conclusions about why nonhuman animals and
humans did what they did. He was the first proponent of operant conditioning, a form of
conditioning different than Pavlovs classical conditioning. Whereas Pavlov focused on the
development of associations and their implications, Skinner sought to explain behavior in terms
of its consequences.
Operant conditioning uses terms like reinforcement and punishment to refer to how
behavior is influenced by its consequences. Positive reinforcement occurs when the presentation
of a stimulus following a response leads to an increase in that responses future occurrence (e.g.,
a rat receiving food upon pressing a response bar will press the bar more frequently in the future)
(Powell, Honey, & Symbaluk, 2013).
Positive reinforcement can be implemented in many ways. In this experiment we focused
on partial reinforcement, that is, the reinforcer did not follow each response, which occurs with
continuous reinforcement. We hypothesized that the behavior of rats trained on a partialreinforcement schedule would require more time to extinguish than that of rats trained on a
continuous-reinforcement schedule.
Method
Subjects
The subjects were six simulated, albino rats (Rattus norvegicus) available in in the Sniffy
the Virtual Rat, Pro Version 3.0 program (Alloway, Wilson, & Graham, 2012).
Procedure

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First, each Sniffy was trained to respond on a continuous schedule of reinforcement. The
response requirement was increased until each rat responded on a variable-ratio (VR) 25
schedule. The programs Operant Associations mind window verified that the bar-sound
association was at or near its maximum level prior to the introduction of extinction.
In order to minimize the time required for the experiment, the Isolate Sniffy option was
selected. The program ran until Sniffy reached the extinction criterion of no more than two
responses during a five minute period. The data from each rat were displayed in a cumulative
record. The results were compared to those obtained in an earlier experiment in which Sniffys
responding had been shaped by continuous reinforcement before extinction was introduced.

Results
Across all subjects, extinction took significantly longer to obtain after exposure to the
VR-25 schedule than after exposure to a continuous reinforcement schedule. Our tables and
figures focus on two subjects: 1 VR-25, 1 CRF. After extinction was introduced following the
VR-25 schedule, extinction required 44 minutes and 53 seconds to reach; during this time Sniffy
made 1,336 responses (see Figure 1). In contrast, following the continuous reinforcement
schedule, the extinction criterion was met after twelve minutes and one second; during this time
Sniffy made 92 responses (see Figure 2). The results for the control and experimental groups
appear in Table 1.
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to highlight the effects of partial reinforcement on the
extinction of behavior in rats. Specifically, we hypothesized that the behavior of the rats trained
on a partial-reinforcement schedule would require a greater length of time to reach the extinction

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criteria than those trained on a continuous reinforcement schedule. Comparing the results from
the two schedules (the VR-25 and the CRF) supported our hypothesis. The results showed that
extinction following partial reinforcement indeed took longer than when following continuous
reinforcement. In other words, for two of the rats in our study (included in our table and
figures), extinction following partial reinforcement required almost four times the duration and
15 times the number of responses than that following continuous reinforcement.
The implications of these findings can be illustrated in the context of a college classroom.
Suppose a professor desires to reinforce students answering questions during class. Continuous
reinforcement could be applied as the professor calls on a student every time her or his hand is
raised. While many professors may strive to follow this method, it is physically and temporally
impractical, and would actually produce less-effective results. Partial reinforcement would be
applied when the teacher only called on the student occasionally when the hand was raised; this
would allow the behavior to be more resistant to extinction and more effective under the time
constraints of class duration.
At some point in the students education they may encounter a classroom setting in which
the teacher provides less reinforcement for question answering than the students received in the
past. In such cases, students who have previously been reinforced on a partial-reinforcement
schedule will continue to raise their hand than those not similarly reinforced. We suggest that
future research explores the possibilities of improving partial reinforcement procedures in the
classroom.

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References

Alloway, T., Wilson, G., & Graham, J. (2012). Sniffy: The virtual rat (Pro Version 3.0). Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.
Powell, R., Honey, P., & Symbaluk, D. (2013). Introduction to learning and behavior (4th ed.).
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.

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Tables and Figures

Subject

Time until Extinction

(s)

Responses until
Extinction

Experimental Condition

2693 sec

1336

721 sec

92

(VR-25 reinforcement schedule)

Control (continuous reinforcement
schedule)

Table 1. A summary of the time (seconds) required to meet the extinction criteria and the total
number of responses required during that time .

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Figure 1. The graphed data from one subject exposed to a VR-25 schedule of reinforcement.
The y-axis measures responding and the x axis time. Extinction (muted) Press Bar marks the
period when reinforcement was discontinued and represents the point in time from which the
length of extinction was measured.

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Figure 2. The graphed data from one subject exposed to a continuous reinforcement schedule.
The y-axis measures responding while the x-axis is time. The title Extinction marks the period
when reinforcement was discontinued and represents the point in time from which the length of
extinction was measured.