Bouts, Pauses, and Units of Operant Performance: A Primer

Operant behavior typically occurs in bouts and pauses. The microstructural analysis of bouts and pauses reveals important and separable information about the physical characteristics of the operant and the motivation behind it. An analysis of interresponse times (IRTs) often reveals a mixture of two exponential distributions. One corresponds to short IRTs within ongoing response bouts, reflecting motor properties of the operant, and the other corresponds to longer intervals between bouts, reflecting the motivation behind the response. Partitioning responses into bout initiations and within-bout responses via this two-mode framework reveals the mechanisms underlying behavior maintenance and change. This approach is used in the fields of neurotoxicology, behavioral pharmacology, and behavioral neuroscience to disentangle the contribution of motivational and motoric variables to the pattern of operant behavior. In this article, we present a primer aimed at providing essential concepts related to the analysis of response bouts and temporal dynamics of operant performance.