Transfer of Persistence of Responding across Motivational and Reward Conditions

Rats were trained with a continuous or partial reinforcement schedule under water deprivation-reward conditions or food deprivation-reward conditions; half were then shifted to the opposite motivational-reward conditions and half remained as in the first phase for a period of continuous reinforcement. Extinction under the second-phase motivational conditions showed that a partial reinforcement effect occurred for all groups (i.e., partial groups were more resistant than the appropriate comparison continuous groups), although a shift in motivational-reward condition tended to reduce the size of the partial reinforcement effect. These results support the notion that the partial reinforcement effect is a robust phenomenon in the rat, not subject to narrow limits as has sometimes been suggested.