Operant responding: Beyond rate and interresponse times

Steve Fowler is best known for his contributions to neuroscience and pharmacology, especially in the behavioral characterization of antipsychotic drugs, which he pursued with great skill and ingenuity. The present review highlights some of his important contributions in understanding the interactions between pharmacology and learning systems, in particular operant learning. Much of Steve's work resulted in novel measurement systems that offered important insights about behavior that were not accessible with traditional operant approaches, which tend to emphasize response rate and interresponse times. A brief review of the emergence of response rate and temporal features of behavior as the dominant measures in operant learning is presented. Then, Steve's approach to behavioral measurement, grounded in his work under Joe Notterman, is developed. I will review selected aspects of his research program as they touch upon and illuminate the dopamine and the anhedonia hypothesis, behavioral characterizations of typical and atypical antipsychotics, the functional roles of response force in learning, and finally the nature of the operant itself.