To expand on this a bit, BF Skinner founded the behaviorist area of psychology (which is important in later fields like neuroscience for training animals on var

To expand on this a bit, BF Skinner founded the behaviorist area of psychology (which is important in later fields like neuroscience for training animals on various experiments), he specifically investigated operant behavior (behavior where the organism does something to its environment) and various schedules of reinforcement. The schedule you're thinking of is one of the strongest schedules for inducing behavior, and that's the variable ratio schedule, where reinforcement occurs after a variable number of responses from the organism. Skinner was actually one of the first to try and bring more rigor to psychology.