Abstract
An experiment was designed to predict the outcome of establishing a worker-parasite relationship between rats paired in a modified Skinner box with the water dipper and the bar attached to opposite walls. The rats were first trained individually to press the bar for water reward. After this individual training the reinforcement, besides being contingent to the pressing response, began also to be freely delivered (by the experimenter) in a variable-interval schedule of reinforcement. The number of such sessions each animal took to stop emitting the bar-pressing response was recorded. After stopping the operant response the animals were again trained individually. Following that they were paired in the experimental cage according to the number of sessions they took to stop the bar-press response. After the development of the worker-parasite relationship, categorization into workers and parasites could be predicted according to the number of sessions the rats took to stop the response in the individual condition. Individual characteristics may then play a role, among a multitude of other possible variables, in the outcome of the worker-parasite relationship between rats.
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