A comparison of two psychophysical methods using animals.

Morse et al. (1966) asked which way of showing lights teaches rats to tell brightness best. They used eight rats in a box with two levers. The rats had to press the lever under the brighter panel to earn food.

Some days the animals saw many bright-dim pairs in a row (block method). Other days the pairs slowly grew harder one by one (staircase method). The team switched the two methods across days and tracked how small a difference each rat could still see.

The block method won. Rats trained with blocks could later spot much smaller brightness steps. Their accuracy jumped higher and stayed there. The staircase group improved too, but their final eye for light was rougher.

Hart et al. (1968) kept the same brightness task and showed brain-zap reinforcement works as well as food. Together the two papers say, "Pick block trials, then pick any strong reinforcer."

Neuringer et al. (1967) and Santi (1978) ran rats on concurrent schedules and proved basic matching rules. H et al. add a teaching twist: how you show the cue matters as much as what the rat earns for it.

No clash appears. The 1966 cue-presentation study and the later schedule studies simply answer different pieces of the same big puzzle: how to shape sharp discriminations while keeping the rat motivated.

If you run discrimination lessons, group the hard examples together first. Blocking gives the learner many quick wins and builds a strong baseline before you fade to finer differences. Try it next time you teach color, shape, or emotion cards; present ten clear trials in a row, then thin the difference. Your client gets the same reinforcer, but the clearer practice order can cut errors in half.