Conditioned reinforcement by conditional discriminative stimuli

A concurrent-chains schedule was used to examine how a delay to conditional discriminative stimuli affects conditioned reinforcement strength. Pigeons' key-peck responses in the initial link produced either of two terminal links according to independent variable-interval 30-s schedules. Each terminal link involved an identical successive conditional discrimination and was segmented into three links: a delay interval (green), a color conditional discriminative stimulus (blue or red), and a line conditional discriminative stimulus (vertical or horizontal lines). Food delivery occurred 45 s after entering the terminal link with a probability of .5, but its conditional probability (1.0 or 0) depended on the combination of the color and the line stimuli. One of the color stimuli occurred independently of further responding, 5 s after entry into the right terminal link, but it occurred 35 s after entry into the left terminal link. One of the line stimuli occurred independently of responding 40 s after entry into either terminal link, synchronized with the offset of the color stimulus. The initial-link relative response rate for the right was consistently higher in comparison with a control condition in which the color stimuli occurred 20 s after entry into either terminal link. The preference for the short delay to the color conditional discriminative stimuli suggests the possibility of conditioned reinforcement by information about the relation between the line conditional discriminative stimuli and the outcomes.