ABSTRACT

Originally published in 1988, the purpose of this title was to present a coherent summary of the previous 30 years’ of research on the way in which animals and humans distribute their behaviour between alternative sources of reinforcement. There were three reasons why the book was needed at the time. First, it makes use of the empirical results available, something only partially present in many theories of the time. Second, as a general source of information to gain understanding of the scope of research on behaviour allocation. Third, a text was needed that described the techniques of experimental design and data analysis in this area.

chapter 1|15 pages

Historical Antecedents

chapter 2|15 pages

The Strict Matching Law

chapter 4|15 pages

Generalized Matching

chapter 5|17 pages

Quantitative Methods

chapter 9|33 pages

Multiple-Schedule Research

chapter 10|31 pages

Concurrent-Chain Performance

chapter 11|33 pages

Matching Models of Signal Detection

chapter 12|6 pages

For the future