Being there on time: Reinforcer effects on timing and locating
Reinforcer share changes move where people go but not when they go, so treat timing and location as separate behavioral targets.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Cowie et al. (2020) used a lab task where participants could pick when and where to respond. The team changed the share of reinforcers tied to each option while keeping everything else the same.
They wanted to see if more reinforcers would strengthen both the timing and the placing of responses, or just one of them.
What they found
Boosting the reinforcer share for a spot made people go there more often. It did not make them hit the time window any better.
The authors say timing and location controls are separate. Reinforcers work through generalization, not simple strengthening.
How this fits with other research
Parsons et al. (1981) showed that giving tokens at the end of the day helps preschoolers generalize good behavior. Cowie’s team now shows that same generalization process can weaken location control in adults. The two studies line up: late, clear reinforcers spread their effect to new places.
Jimenez-Gomez et al. (2025) found that kids and adults pick choices based on what the reinforcer signals about the future, not just on size or rate. Cowie’s result supports that view: reinforcers act like signals, not just goodies.
Landon et al. (2003) proved that bigger reinforcers create bigger choice spikes. Cowie moves one step further: once the share of those reinforcers shifts, the spike moves to a new location while timing stays put.
Why it matters
When you thin a schedule or move toward intermittent reinforcement, watch where the behavior lands, not just when it happens. If you want both place and time to stay accurate, you may need to reinforce each feature on its own schedule. Try probing generalization with a quick location switch during your next maintenance session.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In research on timing, reinforcers often are assumed to influence discrimination of elapsed time. We asked whether changes in choice used to measure timing arise because of joint control by elapsed time and reinforcers, rather than from the direct modification of control by elapsed time by reinforcers. Pigeons worked on a concurrent-choice task in which 1 response was 9 times more likely to produce a reinforcer, reversing between locations when 19 s had elapsed since the marker event. Across conditions, we manipulated the percentage of reinforcers arranged before the probability reversal from 5 to 95%. These changes in reinforcer percentages altered control by location-based elements of the contingency, but not by time-based elements. Choice was well described by a model that assumes that control by the contingency is weakened by generalization across the time and location of reinforcers, and that these generalizations become more likely at later times since a marker. These findings add to a growing body of research that suggests that reinforcers share the same function as other environmental events in determining how the environment controls behavior.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2020 · doi:10.1002/jeab.581