Abstract
Male Siamese fighting fish were presented with a response-contingent mirror image on either CRF or FR3 schedules. It was concluded that the many differences between the groups were understandable as the result of schedule-related changes in the duration of exposure to conspecific images rather than to differences in the frequency of stimulation, and were due to the releasing and not the reinforcing functions of stimulation. The frequency distribution of agonistic behaviors in bettas also was shown to be bimodal: Some males fought intensely, whereas others escaped and attacked little. Furthermore, it was suggested that bettas’ multivariate agonistic sequence has not yet been subjected to an unambiguous operant analysis.
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This paper was supported by grants from the Faculty Development Committee of the University of Michigan-Flint, A Rackham grant from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and Grants MH 38792-01 and MH 33389-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health. I am grateful to Larry Atherton, Jr., and William Mykolajenko for their excellent technical aid and to Colleen Pace for her secretarial assistance.
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Bronstein, P.M. A confound in the application of fixed-ratio schedules to the social behavior of male Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens). Bull. Psychon. Soc. 22, 484–487 (1984). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333885
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333885