Choice, time and food: continuous cyclical changes in food probability between reinforcers.
Brief cues can reboot fading contact with shifting odds, so add tiny signals when long gaps threaten control.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Miranda-Dukoski et al. (2014) worked with pigeons in a lab chamber.
The birds pecked two keys.
Food odds on each key rose and fell like a slow wave inside every cycle.
The team asked: will the birds follow the wave, and can tiny flashes of color keep that tracking sharp?
What they found
The birds did follow the shifting odds, but the match faded as seconds passed since the last pellet.
When a quick key-color flash marked the cycle, control snapped back for a short while.
Without the flash, choice drifted away from the true odds.
How this fits with other research
Lancioni et al. (2011) saw a similar time slip.
They gave pigeons longer breaks between trials and watched preference for uncertain food drop.
Both studies show that time weakens control by probabilistic cues.
King et al. (1990) looked at signals too.
They found that turning reliable and unreliable outcomes into clear lights flipped the birds’ liking.
Ludmila’s brief flashes act the same way: a tiny signal briefly restores choice tracking, just as static signals once flipped preference.
Together, the papers say timing and signaling share the steering wheel.
Why it matters
Your learners may drift from a reinforcement plan as minutes pass.
A quick, salient cue—like a color card, beep, or brief vibration—can reset contact with the current rule.
Use these micro-signals during long tasks or breaks to keep behavior tuned to today’s contingencies, not yesterday’s.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The current experiment examined the degree to which locally varying food probabilities on two keys across time since food presentations can continue to control choice until the next food delivery. In two sets of conditions, the probability of food delivery being made available on one key relative to the other key varied sinusoidally across a 1-min period following each food delivery. In Set 1, food-probability changes were unsignaled and the number of cycles per min was varied across conditions. In Set 2, there were always two complete cycles of the sinusoid in the 1-min period, and brief key-color changes were arranged at a selection of fixed times since food delivery to signal portions of the sinusoid. In Set 1, control of choice by local probability of food on each key decreased over time since food delivery. Control by local food probabilities was greater in conditions that arranged fewer cycles per min. The onset of stimulus changes in Set 2 led to a transient reinstatement of local control by food probabilities regardless of the portion of the sinusoidal variation in food probabilities signaled by the stimuli. However, in conditions where the same colored stimuli signaled different portions of the sinusoidal variation in food-delivery probabilities, stimulus changes attenuated joint control by elapsed time and food-probability values. These results suggest that, changing relative food probabilities and stimuli can direct preference toward the likely location of the next food delivery across time since a food presentation, although the degree to which control over choice will be maintained across elapsed time depends on how experimenter-arranged contingencies are mapped onto elapsed time.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2014 · doi:10.1002/jeab.79