hard · MCAT psych-soc
A researcher trains a rat to press a lever for a food pellet, delivered after a variable number of presses averaging 15. After acquisition, the reinforcer is discontinued entirely.
Compared to a second rat trained on a fixed-ratio-15 schedule and then also placed on extinction, the first rat's lever-pressing during extinction should show:
- Faster extinction, because variable-ratio reinforcement produces weaker response strength overall.
- Slower extinction, because the unpredictable reinforcement pattern makes the absence of reward harder to detect.
- Identical extinction rates, since both schedules averaged the same number of responses per reinforcer.
- Slower extinction, but only because variable-ratio schedules produce lower overall response rates during acquisition.
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