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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 13, 2026

Progressive-ratio Responding for Palatable High-fat and High-sugar Food in Mice

Progressive-ratio Responding for Palatable High-fat and High-sugar Food in Mice

Published on: May 3, 2012

Maintenance of responding when reinforcement becomes delayed.

Daniel S J Costa¹, Robert A Boakes

¹School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. danielc@psych.usyd.edu.au

Learning & Behavior

|August 11, 2007

Summary

Behavioral persistence in rats depends on initial reinforcement schedules. Rats trained with immediate reinforcement maintained behavior even with delays, unlike those initially facing delays.

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Area of Science:

Behavioral Psychology
Animal Learning
Operant Conditioning

Background:

Understanding behavioral persistence is crucial for learning theories.
Reinforcement schedules significantly influence response rates and maintenance.
The transition between reinforcement conditions can reveal underlying learning mechanisms.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the persistence of learned behaviors in rats when reinforcement schedules are altered.
To compare the effects of switching from immediate to delayed reinforcement versus the reverse.
To determine if initial training conditions predict behavioral persistence under new reinforcement contingencies.

Main Methods:

Four experiments were conducted using rats.
Instrumental training and classical conditioning (autoshaping) procedures were employed.
Reinforcement schedules were manipulated, switching between immediate and delayed (20-sec) conditions.
Behavioral measures included lever pressing (sign tracking) and magazine entry (goal tracking).

Main Results:

Rats trained with immediate reinforcement initially showed persistent lever pressing when a delay was introduced (easy-to-hard).
Rats trained with delayed reinforcement from the start (hard-to-hard) exhibited low responding throughout.
Rats initially trained with delayed reinforcement continued low responding when switched to immediate reinforcement (hard-to-easy).
Magazine entry and lever pressing data indicated that initial behavioral dominance influences transfer effects.

Conclusions:

The persistence of behavior is strongly influenced by the initial reinforcement history.
Switching from immediate to delayed reinforcement allows for greater behavioral persistence than the reverse.
Transfer effects in reinforcement learning are partly mediated by the persistence of initially dominant response types (sign vs. goal tracking).