Very interesting idea! I think I've heard something like this before on giving reward randomly yielding to addictive behaviours, like gambling. Do you have any recommended reference on this idea?

The keywords you might be looking for are "partial/intermittent reinforcement" and "variable ratio schedule." The original descriptions are in a 1957 book by Ferster and Skinner, but any psychology textbook should have a description of them in the chapter on conditioning.

Stanford Neuroscience Lectures. Dr. Spoolansky. Free online on Youtube. Forgot which lecture covered it. The whole class is worth a watch. Including the forbidden lecture if you can find it (lets just say it ruffles some feathers by noting some commonalities between OCD and spiritual ritualistic behavior).

> Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky gave the opening lecture of the course entitled Human Behavioral Biology and explains the basic premise of the course and how he aims to avoid categorical thinking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C...

Works much better in dog training. Pretty sure it works better for training me too.