An appraisal of preference for multiple versus mixed schedules.
Clear cues help only when the wait is short; long waits flip preference.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hursh et al. (1974) let pigeons pick between two rooms. One room lit up one color before food and another color before no food. The other room stayed the same color no matter what.
The birds could hop back and forth. The team counted which room the birds entered more often.
What they found
The pigeons chose the room with the color cues. The preference was small but steady. When the color cues appeared more often, the birds liked that room even more.
How this fits with other research
Siegel et al. (1986) ran almost the same test but stretched the time before the cues showed up. With short waits the birds copied R et al. and picked the color room. With long waits they flipped and chose the no-color room. The two papers look opposite, yet both are true; the wait time decides the winner.
Moore (1982) added a twist: if the color room gave food faster, birds loved it. If both rooms gave the same speed, birds did not care. This tells us the cue itself is not magic; speed of first food matters most.
Cicerone (1976) showed birds also like rooms where food delays vary. Mixing delay lengths and mixing colors both raise preference, but for different reasons.
Why it matters
Your learners, like the pigeons, react to signals and timing. If you give clear cues right before reinforcement, you may see a small boost in engagement. If the wait is long, cues can backfire and the learner may avoid the task. Watch the clock, not just the colors.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pigeons' choice responses on either of two keys occasionally produced entry into a terminal link associated with that key. During the terminal links, responses produced access to grain according to mixed- or multiple-interval schedules. The multiple schedules provided stimuli correlated with the interval of time preceding reinforcement whereas the mixed schedules did not. The two subjects reliably preferred the multiple schedules to the mixed schedules throughout a series of replications. Preference for the multiple schedule was much smaller than suggested by earlier work comparing multiple and mixed schedules that had much higher rates of entry into the terminal links. Preference for the multiple schedule was greatly increased in this study when the rate of entry into the terminal schedules was increased. As in previous studies, these high preferences may have been the result of a sharp increase in the number of reinforcements on the multiple (as opposed to the mixed) schedule. The reliable but smaller preferences for the multiple schedule found with lower rates of entry into the terminal links were unconfounded by differences in the number of reinforcements obtained in the two terminal links.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1974 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1974.22-31