Schedule-induced drinking as functions of interpellet interval and draught size in the Java macaque.

Three Java monkeys received food pellets that were assigned by both ascending and descending series of fixed-time schedules whose values varied between 8 and 256 seconds. The draught size dispensed by a concurrently available water-delivery tube was systematically varied between 1.0 and 0.3 milliliter per lick at various fixed-time values during the second and third series determinations. Session water intake was bitonically related to the interpellet interval and was determined by the interaction of (1) the probability of initiating a drinking bout, which fell off at the highest interpellet intervals and, (2) the size of the bout, which increased directly with increases in interpellet interval. Variations in draught size had little effect on total session intakes, but reduced bout size at draught sizes of 0.5 milliliter and below. Thus, a volume-regulation process of schedule-induced drinking operated generally at the session-intake level, but was limited to higher draught sizes at the bout level.