1. Define concurrent schedules. Give examples.

2. Explain the matching law

Work some quantitative problems by doing the homework assignment on

matching and choice. You can also get lots of practice by using the spreadsheet.

3. What are some of the implications of the Matching law for everyday life and

clinical psychology? – come up with your own answers before looking at Box 6.2

4. Spend some time thinking about the matching law in its basic form: The

proportion of behavior allocated to an alternative matches the proportion of

reinforcers for that alternative. Saying that the ratio of responses to two

alternatives matches the ratio of rewards for those responses is just a

different way of expressing the same relationship. Try to work that

through for yourself as we will do in class.

5. What does it mean to undermatch or overmatch? What is bias in the generalized

matching law?

6. How does the matching law apply to simple reinforcement schedules?

7. Some scientists think that matching is just a fundamental operating characteristic

of most vertebrate animals that evolved to insures that animals mainly do what

pays off but also maintain some variability in case there are shifts in resource

availability (i.e. a plentiful food source dries up and the animal must switch to a

different one. This is known as the exploitation-exploration problem. Other