Serial pattern learning: The anticipation of worsening conditions by pigeons

In general, animals are known to be sensitive to the immediacy of reinforcers. That is, they are generally impulsive and outcomes that occur in the future are generally heavily discounted. Furthermore, they should prefer alternatives that provide reinforcers that require less rather than greater effort to obtain. In the present research, pigeons were given a choice between (1) obtaining reinforcers on a progressively more difficult schedule of reinforcement; starting with four pecks, then eight pecks, then 16 pecks, then 32 pecks, and finally 64 pecks on each trial, and (2) a color signaling a number of pecks for a single reinforcer: red = six, green = 11, blue = 23, or yellow = 45. If pigeons choose optimally, most of the time they should choose the progressive schedule to obtain five reinforcers rather than switch to a color to receive only one. However, if they are sensitive primarily to the number of pecks to the next reinforcer, they should choose the progressive schedule once before switching to red, twice before switching to green, three times before switching to blue, and four times before switching to yellow. Instead, they systematically switched too early. Rather than choose based on the rate of reinforcement or even based on the time or effort to the next reinforcer, they appear to anticipate that the progressive schedule is going to get more difficult, and they base their choice suboptimally on the serial pattern of the worsening progressive schedule.