Devaluation of stimuli contingent on choice: evidence for conditioned reinforcement.
A stimulus linked with extinction quickly loses its reinforcing punch, so watch the learner’s recent history before counting on old reinforcers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Paul et al. (1987) worked with pigeons in a two-key chamber.
Birds first pecked on a red key to open a green key.
Pecks on the green key sometimes paid food, sometimes paid nothing.
After many sessions the green key became a conditioned reinforcer.
The team then added short extinction periods.
During these minutes green key pecks never paid off.
Finally they tested how much the birds still worked to open the green key.
What they found
Time spent with the green key dropped fast.
Birds made only half as many responses after the key had been paired with no food.
The stimulus lost its reinforcing power once it signaled extinction.
A brief extinction history was enough to devalue the conditioned reinforcer.
How this fits with other research
Johnson et al. (2009) seems to disagree.
They gave pigeons extra flashing lights that had no link to food.
Those lights actually protected responding when the schedule later changed.
The two studies look opposite, but they test different things.
R et al. paired the stimulus with pure extinction, so value fell.
A et al. kept the stimulus neutral, so it acted like background noise and buffered change.
Kettering et al. (2018) extends the same rule to children.
They broke a reflexive CMO by giving reinforcers before the problem cue, again showing that extinction history lowers stimulus power.
Why it matters
Your client’s favorite token, praise, or iPad clip can lose strength if it ever predicts «no reinforcement.»
Check the learner’s recent history before you blame «non-compliance.»
If a once-powerful stimulus now fails, run a quick probe with guaranteed pay.
When you must place a reinforcer on extinction, pair a new stimulus with continued pay so the old one can recover later.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pigeons were presented a concurrent-chains schedule of reinforcement that had terminal links of equal duration. The initial links of the schedule were periodically interrupted by 15-s periods during which an extinction schedule was in effect. The extinction periods were presented on either a response-contingent or a noncontingent basis. Relative response rate for the left alternative decreased when the extinction periods were accompanied by the left terminal-link stimulus. Relative response rate for the right alternative decreased when the extinction periods were accompanied by the right terminal-link stimulus. Relative response rate varied inversely with the frequency of presentation of the extinction periods but was unaffected by presence versus absence of the response contingency in the schedule of extinction-period presentation. Furthermore, relative response rate was unaffected by presentation of extinction periods accompanied by a novel stimulus. When the extinction periods were presented after reinforcement in the left terminal link instead of as interruptions of the initial links, relative response rate for the left alternative was reduced if the postreinforcement extinction period was accompanied by the terminal-link stimulus for the left chain and reduced less if the extinction period was accompanied by the terminal-link stimulus for the right chain. The results demonstrate that the correlation between the terminal-link stimulus and extinction influenced the relative response rate in the initial link.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1987 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1987.48-117