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Updated: Aug 7, 2026

A Treatment Package without Escape Extinction to Address Food Selectivity
Published on: August 21, 2015
Stimulus-food relations and free-operant postponement of timeout from response-independent food presentation
Abstract:
Grain was briefly presented to food-deprived pigeons intermittently and response-independently except during signaled timeouts. During Experiment 1, key pecks postponed the next timeout for a specified interval. Rates of pecking during time in were inversely related to the length of time pecking postponed the next timeout. Response-independent presentation of temporal distributions of timeouts exactly matched to a preceding postponement condition decreased pecking rates during Experiment 2. These results indicate that key pecking of pigeons can be controlled by response-dependent postponement of timeout, but that responses elicited by stimulus-reinforcer relations inherent in timeout-postponement procedures may substantially modify rates and patterns of pecking.
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