The failure of stimulus control after presence-absence discrimination of click-rate

Pigeons were trained to discriminate a slow click-rate from its absence, or to discriminate it from a faster click-rate. Subsequent click-rate generalization tests produced the usual steepened gradients after the intradimensional discrimination but produced flat gradients after presence/absence discrimination. The occurrence of stimulus control only after intradimensional discrimination, combined with previous results showing stimulus control sometimes after nondifferential reinforcement and sometimes after presence/absence discrimination, argues for a reformulation of the problem of stimulus control. A theoretical framework, relying upon blocking effects inherent in the different discrimination procedures, was presented to account for the diversity of results.