Assessment of multiple measures of honey bee (Apis mellifera ligustica) and horse (Equus ferus caballus) responding on fixed interval schedules: An individual versus aggregate analysis

Abstract

We compared different measures of temporal control of two species' responding when reinforced on fixed interval schedules of reinforcement. The measures that were evaluated are: cumulative response curves, response bin tallies, quarter life, index of curvature, post-reinforcement pause, inter-response times, trial duration, and response duration. Honey bee (Apis mellifera ligustica) and horse (Equus ferus caballus) responding was exposed to fixed interval schedules of reinforcement because the former species has not demonstrated evidence of temporally control responding (Grossmann, 1973) while the latter has demonstrated evidence of temporally control responding (Myers and Mesker, 1960); comparing response patterns from temporally controlled versus non-temporally controlled fixed interval performances revealed what measures do, or do not, convincingly operationalize temporal control. To contrast the effectiveness of an individual versus aggregate analyses of these measures of temporal control, both Observation Oriented Modeling and null hypothesis significance testing analysis methods were employed and compared. For most measures and assessments, horses demonstrated consistent evidence of responding coming under temporal control while honey bees demonstrated inconsistent evidence of responding coming under temporal control of the fixed interval schedules.