Effects on deprivation and reinforcement-magnitude of response variability.

Animals were trained to displace any one of five response keys in order to put themselves in a stimulus condition in which reinforcement could be obtained by depressing a response lever. Decreased deprivation and magnitude of reinforcement were found to increase the variability of the distribution of key responses. The relevance of these findings to other experiments in which deprivation, reinforcement magnitude, and intermittent reinforcement were studied is discussed.