Operant Preference for Stereophonic over Monophonic Music

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Abstract
In conjugate reinforcement, the intensity of a continuously available reinforcing consequence is directly controlled by the subject's rate of responding. This immediate and direct relationship between response rate and reinforcer intensity makes the conjugate an ideal contingency for comparing the strength of different reinforcers. This experiment demonstrates the advantages of conjugate reinforcement in measuring preferences for narrative reinforcers, which lose much of their strength when presented on an episodic schedule. One-operandum and two-operanda preference techniques are compared. Analysis of four normal adults' preferences for stereophonic over monophonic music demonstrated: (1) Conjugately contingent music is a reinforcer of sufficient strength to maintain responding and shows considerable resistance to satiation. (2) Although stereophonic music was discriminated from and verbally preferred to monophonic music by all four subjects, stereophonic music was operantly preferred by only two of the four. Two stimuli which can be discriminated and for which subjects verbally indicate differential preference do not necessarily have differential reinforcing powers.

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