Choice behavior in transition: development of preference for the higher probability of reinforcement.
Bigger reinforcement gaps make new preferences stick faster.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers let pigeons pick between two keys. One key gave food more often.
They kept changing how much more often. The gap ranged from small to very large.
Birds worked in short trials. The team watched how fast the birds switched to the richer side.
What they found
Pigeons always learned to prefer the better key. Bigger gaps made the switch happen faster.
When the rich side was much better, birds got it right almost right away.
How this fits with other research
Najdowski et al. (2003) pushed the idea further. They changed the delays every single day. Birds still flipped their choice almost overnight. Together the papers show pigeons can track both sudden and daily shifts.
Lincoln et al. (1988) asked the same transition question but tested math models. Their birds also moved toward the better schedule. The 1990 paper adds the rule: the larger the payoff gap, the quicker that move happens.
Sponheim (1996) looked half-preferring to partial reinforcement. That sounds opposite until you see he controlled color cues. Strip the extra lights and the preference vanishes. T et al. kept cues steady, so their birds showed clean probability learning.
Why it matters
If you want a client to pick the new, better schedule fast, make the payoff gap obvious. Load the desired option with far more points, praise, or tokens at first. You can thin later once the preference locks in. The bird data say a wide ratio is the quickest teacher.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Ten acquisition curves were obtained from each of 4 pigeons in a two-choice discrete-trial procedure. In each of these 10 conditions, the two response keys initially had equal probabilities of reinforcement, and subjects' choice responses were about equally divided between the two keys. Then the reinforcement probabilities were changed so that one key had a higher probability of reinforcement (the left key in half of the conditions and the right key in the other half), and in nearly every case the subjects developed a preference for this key. The rate of acquisition of preference for this key was faster when the ratio of the two reinforcement probabilities was higher. For instance, acquisition of preference was faster in conditions with reinforcement probabilities of .12 and .02 than in conditions with reinforcement probabilities of .40 and .30, even though the pairs of probabilities differed by .10 in both cases. These results were used to evaluate the predictions of some theories of transitional behavior in choice situations. A trial-by-trial analysis of individual responses and reinforcers suggested that reinforcement had both short-term and long-term effects on choice. The short-term effect was an increased probability of returning to the same key on the one or two trials following a reinforcer. The long-term effect was a gradual increase in the proportion of responses on the key with the higher probability of reinforcement, an increase that usually continued for several hundred trials.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1990 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1990.53-409