Effects of advance notice on transition‐related pausing in pigeons
Advance notice can lengthen pausing when reinforcement drops, so clinicians should test, not assume, its value.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Toegel and team worked with three pigeons in a small lab chamber.
The birds pecked a key on a chained fixed-ratio schedule: first link FR 20, second link FR 50.
Before each switch from rich to lean or lean to rich, a flashing houselight gave a two-second heads-up.
The researchers timed how long the birds paused after each notice.
What they found
The warning light made pausing longer when the birds moved from rich to lean.
When they could not tell which switch was coming, the light had no clear effect.
In short, advance notice did not smooth the transition—it slightly slowed it.
How this fits with other research
Sheldon (1971) also used chained FR schedules with pigeons and saw long pauses when most work sat in the final link.
Toegel’s birds paused more after a warning, hinting that notice itself can act like a heavy terminal link.
Fine et al. (2005) showed pigeons sometimes like unpredictable schedules.
That taste for variety may explain why the flashing cue hurt performance: it removed surprise, not stress.
Why it matters
You might give clients a two-minute warning before ending a favorite game.
This study says that cue could backfire if the next task is harder or less fun.
Try testing short, then long warnings, and watch if pause or escape grows.
Let data, not habit, guide your transition signals.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Transitions between tasks can produce behavioral disruptions that are characterized as problematic. Advance notice, a procedure designed to reduce disruptions, involves presenting a stimulus to warn of the end of the ongoing activity and the nature of the upcoming activity. Clinical evaluations of advance notice have produced mixed results. We studied advance notice in a controlled laboratory setting. Pigeons' keypecking was maintained on a multiple schedule with 2 fixed-ratio components. In the lean component, completing the ratio produced brief access to food; in the rich component, completing the ratio produced longer access. Disruptions in operant behavior, measured as pauses in pecking, were reliably produced in the transition from a rich component to a lean one. Advance notice was provided by flashing the houselight before transitions to lean components. Advance notice did not reduce pausing in the rich-lean transition; instead, it tended to increase it. When the flashing houselight warned of a transition but was equally likely to be followed by the rich component as the lean one, the stimulus had no reliable effect on pausing. Despite its limitations as a translational model of clinical settings, this experiment suggests that clinical use of advance notice should be approached with caution.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2022 · doi:10.1002/jeab.730