In operant conditioning, the matching law is a quantitative relationship that holds between the relative rates of response and the relative rates of reinforcement in concurrent schedules of reinforcement. For example, if two response alternatives A and B are offered to an organism, the ratio of response rates to A and B equals the ratio of reinforcements yielded by each response.[1] This law applies fairly well when non-human subjects are exposed to concurrent variable interval schedules (but see below); its applicability in other situations is less clear, depending on the assumptions made and the details of the experimental situation. The generality of applicability of the matching law is subject of current debate.[2]
The matching law can be applied to situations involving a single response maintained by a single schedule of reinforcement if one assumes that alternative responses are always available to an organism, maintained by uncontrolled "extraneous" reinforcers. For example, an animal pressing a lever for food might pause for a drink of water.
The matching law was first formulated by R.J. Herrnstein (1961) following an experiment with pigeons on concurrent variable interval schedules.[3] Pigeons were presented with two buttons in a Skinner box, each of which led to varying rates of food reward. The pigeons tended to peck the button that yielded the greater food reward more often than the other button, and the ratio of their rates to the two buttons matched the ratio of their rates of reward on the two buttons.
^Poling, A., Edwards, T. L., Weeden, M., & Foster, T. (2011). The matching law. Psychological Record, 61(2), 313-322.
^Simon, C., & Baum, W. M. (2017). Allocation of Speech in Conversation. Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 107.
^Herrnstein, R.J. (1961). Relative and absolute strength of responses as a function of frequency of reinforcement. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour, 4, 267–72.
In operant conditioning, the matchinglaw is a quantitative relationship that holds between the relative rates of response and the relative rates of reinforcement...
Look up matching in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Matching may refer to: Matching, Essex, England Matching Green Matching Tye Matching (graph theory)...
Army. His major research finding as an experimental psychologist is the matchinglaw, the tendency of animals to allocate their choices in direct proportion...
Matching funds are funds that are set to be paid in proportion to funds available from other sources. Matching fund payments usually arise in situations...
in behavioral psychology is a theoretical algorithm that predicts the matchinglaw. Melioration theory is used as an explanation for why an organism makes...
from the matchinglaw he had observed in studies of concurrent schedules of reinforcement, should be regarded as a quantification of the law of effect...
law of large numbers. Unfortunately, for observational studies, the assignment of treatments to research subjects is typically not random. Matching attempts...
schedules are variable intervals, a quantitative relationship known as the matchinglaw is found between relative response rates in the two schedules and the...
development in the study of reinforcement principles which led to the matchinglaw and continuing theoretical advances in the possible functions of depression...
(NAFIS) is an Australian fingerprint and palm print database and matching system to assist law enforcement agencies across Australia and the Department of...
In the United States, an employer matching program is an employer's potential payment to their 401(k) plan that depends on participating employees' contribution...
An order matching system or simply matching system is an electronic system that matches buy and sell orders for a stock market, commodity market or other...
sources at varying intensities, so that (by Grassmann's laws) integrating the color matching functions with that spectral distribution will yield the...
Its first major exponent was B.F. Skinner (1939). It is used in the MatchingLaw. R = # of Responses/Unit of time = B/t Rate of reinforcement Herrnstein...
phenomenon of hyperbolic discounting is implicit in Richard Herrnstein's "matchinglaw", which states that when dividing their time or effort between two non-exclusive...
foraging, errorless learning, learning and the Rescorla-Wagner model, matchinglaw, Melioration, scalar expectancy, signal detection and stimulus control...
Its first major exponent was B.F. Skinner (1939). It is used in the MatchingLaw. Rf = # of reinforcements/unit of time = SR+/t Rate of response Herrnstein...
by matching grants from the Carnegie Foundation. In some cases, progressive measures intended to reduce election fraud, such as the Eight Box Law in South...
Kennedy and Gray utilized the matchinglaw in order to reanalyze IFD experiments. When psychologists perform tests of this law, they use more sensitive measures...
worked with William M. Baum, developing ideas from Richard Herrnstein's matchinglaw. He subsequently became one of the founders of Behavioral Economics....
Online lawyer referral services are sometimes called attorney-client matching services. People who contact a service may be matched with one or more...
from radar engineering), the matchinglaw, and Rescorla–Wagner rule for classical conditioning. While the first three laws are all deterministic in nature...
Global Information