Title: Adjunctive behavior and smoking induced by a maze solving schedule in humans
Abstract: Abstract Adjunctive behavior has been reported as occurring in a variety of species and has been described primarily as a phenomenon of excessive drinking in the rat (schedule induced polydipsia). In an earlier study [9] it was shown that adjunctive behavior occurs in adult human subjects with an FI 60 schedule controlling game playing on a poker machine. In the present study 20 subjects, all University personnel or students, were paid to participate in an experiment where they were required to solve a maze under conditions of scheduled access (8 sec maze drawing). Four subjects were tested with 8, 60, 120 and 300 sec intervals, and 4 with FI 120 on all test sessions. An additional 12 subjects, who were all habitual smokers, were tested with FI 60 sec intervals on all test sessions. A comparison with baseline conditions, consisting of either listening to a tape recording or continuous problem solving, showed an increase in the amount of subjects' motor activity under schedule conditions. There was a significant increase in movement scores with an increase in schedule length, but no increase with repeated scheduled trials of equal duration. The amount of smoking during test sessions was significantly greater than during smoking baseline sessions. Allowing the subject to smoke or not to smoke on maze schedule sessions made no difference to the movement scores. Eight of the subjects were also given instructions to keep still. These instructions had no effect in reducing the amount of activity. These data show that the scheduling of cognitive tasks can also lead to adjunctive behavior.
Publication Year: 1976
Publication Date: 1976-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref', 'pubmed']
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Cited By Count: 43
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