Extinction reveals stimulus control: latent learning of feature-negative discriminations in pigeons

Various discriminations based on the presence versus absence of a single feature are supposedly learned much better when the feature appears on reinforced rather than nonreinforced trials. However, failures to show discriminative acquisition with the feature on negative trials could reflect a deficiency in control of performance rather than a lack of learning. Five experiments supported this alternative possibility. Pigeons that had yielded little or no evidence of learning (with distinguishing features like a small white square on the response key or a tone located some distance away) revealed clear differences between keypecking to the formerly positive and negative stimuli when all food was removed from the situation. Besides extinction, several other procedures for decreasing the positive predictiveness of the most informative stimulus element also unmasked feature-negative learning, whereas general and specific contextual changes did not. Incompletely mastered feature-positive discriminations improved during extinction, too. The findings of better discrimination performance in extinction were related to analogous effects in previous generalization and discrimination research employing other tasks and arrangements. A sign-tracking analysis could not completely account for the present results.