JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR THE ROLE OF VERBAL BEHAVIOR IN HUMAN LEARNING: INFANT PERFORMANCE ON FIXED-INTERVAL SCHEDULES

The performances of two infants less than one year old were investigated on fixed-interval schedules. When the infants touched a cylinder either music or food was presented accord-ing to fixed-interval schedules ranging in value from 10 to 50 seconds. With respect to two principal criteria, namely, pattern of responding and sensitivity to the schedule parameter, the subjects ' behavior closely resembled that of animals but differed markedly from that of older children and adults. Negatively accelerated responding in the course of the fixed interval in the early sessions gave way to a scalloped pattern, consisting of a pause after reinforcement followed by an accelerated response rate. This scalloped pattern was the final form of responding on all schedule values. Analysis of data after performance had stabilized showed that postreinforcement pause was a negatively accelerated increasing function, and running rate (calculated after excluding the postreinforcement pause) was a declining function, of schedule value. On each schedule, the durations of mean succes-sive interresponse times declined in the course of the fixed interval and were directly re-lated to schedule value. The results supported Lowe's (1979) suggestion that verbal be-havior may be responsible for major differences in the schedule performance of older humans and animals. Key words: verbal behavior, learning, fixed-interval, scalloping, postreinforcement pause, interresponse times, response rate, cylinder-touch responses, human infants How human operant behavior is determined and whether it is subject to the same control-ling variables as animal behavior is an issue that has attracted considerable attention and some controversy in recent years (Bradshaw