Initial and long-term preferences of 6 rhesus monkeys for 14 automatically dispensable rewards were determined by paired-comparison and operant response rate procedures. Initial preference for sugar pellets, dextrose or sucrose, was at least as high as that for any other single reward studied. Reward “cocktails,” composed of mixtures of several different rewards, were preferred after several hundred rewards had been consumed. It was concluded that the paired-comparison method provided a better estimate of initial preference than did the operant response rate procedure.
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