Effects of reinforcer magnitude on reinforced behavioral variability.
Larger reinforcers freeze the current response, so use smaller ones when you need novelty.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Cashon et al. (2013) worked with pigeons in a lab. The birds had to peck four times on a panel.
To earn food, the four-peck sequence had to be different from the last ten sequences.
The team changed the amount of food. Sometimes the cup was big, sometimes it was small.
What they found
Big food cups made the birds stick to the same peck order.
Small cups made the birds change their order more often.
The contingency stayed the same; only the portion size moved the variability needle.
How this fits with other research
Weinsztok et al. (2022) flipped the finding into a clinic. They gave kids bigger treats for good behavior. The large reward kept the treatment working even when staff messed up the plan.
Oliver et al. (2018) also saw size matter. When they shrank the reward for the new response, old problem behavior came back. Upsizing the reward kept the old behavior away.
Together the three papers show one rule: bigger reinforcers lock in whatever response you just paid for. In the lab that meant less variety; in therapy it meant more stability.
Why it matters
If you want a client to try new ways to ask, paint, or play, start with small praise or bites. Save the big reinforcers for after the new form is steady. That simple swap keeps variability alive while you shape the skill.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Eight pigeons were exposed to a two-component multiple schedule. In each component, four-peck sequences across left and right keys were reinforced according to a variability threshold contingency. In one condition, only infrequently occurring response sequences were reinforced in each component, thereby generating highly variable sequences. In a separate condition, when the variability threshold contingency was lenient in each component, sequences were much less variable. In each condition, reinforcer magnitude was manipulated across components, and the larger reinforcer magnitude produced less variability than the smaller reinforcer magnitude. These results suggest that larger reinforcers hinder the reinforcement of behavioral variability. The results are interpretable in terms of the larger reinforcer inducing a greater level of behavioral repetition, particularly as the time to reinforcement was approached. This effect may have implications for reinforcing behavioral variability in humans.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2013 · doi:10.1002/jeab.50