Killeen's theory is very interesting, particularly the analogy about light versus gravity; sometimes in describing complex behavioral theory I compare behaviorism to physics. By that I mean: first you learn that reinforcement increases behavior and punishment decreases it, but it's not the whole story. Similarly, you might learn that gravity is a force that attracts mass, but this is surely not how a physicist understands gravity.
Baum's theory of allocation is one that makes a certain logical sense to me (which is not to say it's correct). That theory might be explained as: an organism's behavior adds up to 100%. If a rat eats for 90% of its time, then perhaps 10% is wheel running. In theory, keeping this simple for the sake of math, you can reduce eating time and increase wheel running. In fact, activity anorexia does illustrate this exact principle.
I do agree with you that there should really be more human research on induction, though perhaps it is too difficult to control.
Great post, Paul. The discussion of schedule-induced behavior takes me back to conversations we once had back in the day. I remember a question you posed at the time was whether fans watching a favorite sports team might engage in schedule-induced eating/drinking in relation to the temporal dynamics of the SR+ schedules. I still think about this when I watch sports, though it occurs to me that the SR+ schedules in sports occur more on variable schedules, which probably masks schedule-induced behavior that may be present with fixed schedules.
The topic is not much studied these days, even in EAB circles, but here's a recent paper we just published in Perspectives on Behavior Science, I thought might be of interest.
Killeen's theory is very interesting, particularly the analogy about light versus gravity; sometimes in describing complex behavioral theory I compare behaviorism to physics. By that I mean: first you learn that reinforcement increases behavior and punishment decreases it, but it's not the whole story. Similarly, you might learn that gravity is a force that attracts mass, but this is surely not how a physicist understands gravity.
Baum's theory of allocation is one that makes a certain logical sense to me (which is not to say it's correct). That theory might be explained as: an organism's behavior adds up to 100%. If a rat eats for 90% of its time, then perhaps 10% is wheel running. In theory, keeping this simple for the sake of math, you can reduce eating time and increase wheel running. In fact, activity anorexia does illustrate this exact principle.
I do agree with you that there should really be more human research on induction, though perhaps it is too difficult to control.
Thanks Fred.
Great post, Paul. The discussion of schedule-induced behavior takes me back to conversations we once had back in the day. I remember a question you posed at the time was whether fans watching a favorite sports team might engage in schedule-induced eating/drinking in relation to the temporal dynamics of the SR+ schedules. I still think about this when I watch sports, though it occurs to me that the SR+ schedules in sports occur more on variable schedules, which probably masks schedule-induced behavior that may be present with fixed schedules.
The topic is not much studied these days, even in EAB circles, but here's a recent paper we just published in Perspectives on Behavior Science, I thought might be of interest.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40614-025-00453-5
I think it is open access, but if not, let me know and I can send a PDF.
Thanks for the interesting post. Keep it up!
Glad you liked the post. Yes, your article is open access. Thanks.
To clarify, by "we" I mean the journal, not "we" as in my lab.