Aversive properties of the negative stimulus in a successive discrimination.
A stimulus that signals extinction becomes mildly aversive, and you can either let the client escape it or use that quality to reduce relapse.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Rilling et al. (1969) worked with pigeons in a lab.
The birds first learned to peck a key for food.
Next the key color changed during extinction.
A new key then let the birds take a short break from that color.
The team counted how often the pigeons pecked the break key.
What they found
The pigeons pecked hard to escape the extinction color.
That color had become a conditioned aversive stimulus.
In plain words, the birds treated the no-food signal like something bad.
How this fits with other research
Winett et al. (1972) asked the opposite question.
They let pigeons work to see the extinction color.
The color did not reinforce looking; it stayed neutral.
Together the papers show the same cue can be bad to feel but not good to watch.
Locurto et al. (1980) later repeated the idea with humans.
People pressed a button to see a cue that meant no points.
The cue reinforced looking, even though it signaled bad news.
Species and procedure matter: people will watch the signal, pigeons will flee it.
King et al. (2026) extended the 1969 finding to human relapse.
Adults given the extinction cue during treatment showed less resurgence.
The once-aversive cue now helped keep problem behavior down.
Why it matters
The extinction cue is not just information; it carries emotional weight.
You can use this in two ways.
First, remove or mask the cue if you want to avoid escape.
Second, keep the cue present if you want its mild aversiveness to guard against relapse.
Check how your client reacts to the no-reinforcement signal and plan accordingly.
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Join Free →During extinction, watch if the client avoids the table, card, or tone that signals no reinforcement; if yes, either let a brief break occur or keep the cue in view to strengthen future suppression.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Experiment I sought to determine if the stimulus correlated with extinction in a successive discrimination was an aversive stimulus. An escape response provided an index of aversive control. Two groups of pigeons were exposed to a multiple variable-interval 30-sec extinction schedule. For the experimental group, a single peck on a second key produced a timeout during which all lights in the chamber were dark. For the control group, pecks on the second key had no contingency. The rate of responding on the timeout key during extinction for the experimental group was higher than that of the control group during all sessions of discrimination training except the first. In Exp. II, green was correlated with variable interval 30-sec and red was correlated with variable-interval 5-min. Timeouts were obtained from variable-interval 5-min. There were more timeouts from extinction in Exp. I than from variable-interval 5-min in Exp. II. Experiment III showed that not presenting the positive stimulus reduced the number of timeouts from the negative stimulus for the two birds from Exp. I that had the highest rate of timeouts from extinction, but had little effect on the two birds that had the lowest rate of timeouts. These results suggest that in a multiple schedule, the stimulus correlated with extinction, or the lower response rate, functions as a conditioned aversive stimulus. Explanations of the timeout response in terms of extinction produced variability, displaced aggression, and stimulus change, were considered but found inadequate.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1969 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1969.12-917