Social Coordination Maintained by Progressive Delay of Coordination-Dependent Reinforcement

Social coordination refers to conjoint responses of two or more organisms that produce consequences for each and can be maintained by coordination-dependent reinforcement. Previous experimental investigations of coordination typically arranged immediate reinforcement following a coordinated response, leaving the effects of delayed reinforcement on coordination largely unexplored. The present investigation examined the effects of delayed reinforcement on coordinated responding across two experiments using pairs of pigeons. Experiment 1 evaluated the effects of progressively increasing delays of reinforcement on coordinated responding and assessed whether coordination-reinforcer dependency influenced the persistence of coordination. Coordination ratios and coordination rates generally were lower during delayed relative to immediate reinforcement. In addition, break points, which were used as a measure of persistence, were consistently higher during coordination-dependent than coordination-independent delayed reinforcement. Experiment 2 compared coordinated responding maintained under signaled and unsignaled progressively increasing delays of coordination-dependent reinforcement. Coordination generally persisted at higher levels during signaled than unsignaled delays, and coordination ratios and coordination rates maintained under signaled delays more closely resembled performance maintained under immediate reinforcement. These findings suggest that delayed reinforcement weakens coordinated responding and that delay-correlated stimuli may attenuate some of the disruptive effects of delay on coordinated behavior.