Divided stimulus control: Which key did you peck, or what color was it?
A tiny pause before the reinforcer can peel away unwanted location control while keeping color control intact.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Davison (2018) worked with pigeons in a small lab chamber.
The birds could peck left or right keys. Each key changed color every trial.
After the peck, grain arrived either right away or after a 3-second pause.
The test asked: do the birds remember which key they hit, or what color it was?
What they found
Instant grain hurt memory for both place and color.
A short 3-second wait only hurt place memory.
Color control stayed strong when the delay was added.
The reinforcer split control between two cues, then time peeled off the weaker one.
How this fits with other research
Badia et al. (1972) showed that clear differential reinforcement can lock auditory place control in one or two sessions. Davison adds that messy, non-differential payoff splits control and can later let one cue fade.
Rey et al. (2020) found that long DRO still works if the contingency is easy to see. Davison’s color cue stayed strong for the same reason: it stayed easy to tell apart.
Mulvaney et al. (1974) watched autopecking shift with local cues. Davison gives the next step: when payoff is immediate, both place and color share the steering wheel.
Why it matters
If you give a reinforcer the same second a client responds, you may accidentally strengthen more than one feature of the scene. A short pause before praise or a token can let the weaker, unwanted cue drop out while the key feature stays in charge. Try adding a brief two- or three-second delay before you deliver a treat or high-five when you want place or movement to matter less than color, shape, or word cues.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Insert a 3-second delay between the child’s response and your praise when you want color, picture, or word cues to stay in charge.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Responding on concurrent schedules produced a conditional discrimination (Phases 1 and 2), asking either which peck produced the event, or which color the keys were when the event was produced. In Phases 3 and 4, reinforcer delivery or a delay in blackout was interpolated between responding and the conditional discrimination. In Phase 1, location versus color discrimination accuracy was controlled by the relative reinforcer frequency for correct responses to these questions (divided stimulus control). In Phases 2 to 4, relative reinforcer frequency for correct responses to these questions was .5, and the relative frequency with which concurrent-schedule responses produced the questions was varied. This variation had no clear effect on the accuracy of reporting Location or Color. These results are consistent with the model of divided control suggested by Davison and Elliffe (2010). Arranging a 3-s reinforcer between responding and choice decreased both color and location accuracy, but a 3-s delay only decreased location accuracy. Thus, in concurrent-schedule performance, both ambient stimuli prior to a reinforcer and the location of the just-reinforced response are available as discriminative stimuli following the reinforcer. Control of postreinforcer responding is divided between these according to their association with the relative frequency of subsequent reinforcers.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2018 · doi:10.1002/jeab.295