EFFECTS OF UNSIGNALED DELAY OF REINFORCEMENT ON PREFERENCE AND RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

Abstract

In Phase 1, pigeons were trained on a concurrent chain in which a 3‐s unsignaled delay of reinforcement was imposed on responding in a terminal link in some conditions. Preference for that terminal link was always reduced in comparison with conditions in which there was no delay, substantially so for 3 of the 4 pigeons. In Phase 2, pigeons responded in a two‐component multiple schedule. The scheduled rates of reinforcement were equal, but a 3‐s unsignaled delay was imposed in one component. Resistance of responding to prefeeding and extinction was reduced in the delay component for the same 3 subjects for which the data had shown strong effects of delay on preference. Systematic observation revealed differences in response topography. In the delay component, subjects oriented more closely to the key and responses were less forceful compared with the no‐delay component. Our results give further evidence that preference and resistance to change covary within subjects. However, they challenge the premise that the critical determiners of preference (i.e., terminal‐link value) and resistance to change (behavioral mass) may be quantified purely in terms of stimulus—reinforcer relations.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 67 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.