Automaintenance without stimulus-change reinforcement: Temporal control of key pecks

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Psychology
• Animal Cognition
• Operant Conditioning

Background:

• Autoshaping procedures in pigeons are well-studied.
• Temporal control of responding is a key aspect of learning.
• Yoked designs help differentiate response-dependent from response-independent reinforcement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate key pecking maintenance in pigeons under a modified autoshaping procedure.
• To examine temporal control of responding when pecking postpones reinforcement.
• To explore the role of signaled reinforcement in autoshaped behavior.

Main Methods:

• Experimentally naive pigeons were used in yoked pairs.
• A modified autoshaping procedure involved 'leader' birds whose pecking delayed reinforcement for both birds.
• Role reversals between leader and follower birds were implemented.

Main Results:

• Key pecking developed and was maintained in all pigeons across role reversals.
• Asymptotic temporal distributions of key pecking showed maximum responding after keylight onset, decreasing before reinforcement.
• Follower birds, receiving response-independent reinforcement, developed temporal control previously unobserved in Pavlovian conditioning.

Conclusions:

• Key pecking maintenance in leader birds supports an interpretation of elicited responding by signaled grain presentation.
• The findings challenge traditional views of reinforcement schedules in autoshaping.
• Temporal control in follower birds suggests sophisticated associative learning even without direct contingency.