Errorless learning of a conditional temporal discrimination.
Errorless prompting shields conditional timing skills from the memory-wiping effect of long delays.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Arantes et al. (2011) taught pigeons a conditional rule: peck left if a short delay passed, peck right if a long delay passed. The birds had to remember the cue during empty seconds.
Half the birds learned through trial-and-error. The other half learned through errorless prompting. Prompts were slowly faded until the birds answered alone.
What they found
Errorless birds made almost no mistakes during training. Trial-and-error birds made many errors at first.
When the researchers added extra delay seconds, the errorless group stayed accurate. The trial-and-error group fell apart.
How this fits with other research
Pritchard et al. (1987) saw the same thing in rats. Gradual prompting beat trial-and-error for visual discriminations. The pattern holds across species and senses.
Skrtic et al. (1982) looks like a contradiction. They showed that longer delays always hurt pigeon accuracy. Joana’s errorless method proves you can shield performance from that damage. The older study used trial-and-error only, so it missed the protective effect of good prompting.
Stancliffe et al. (2007) trained pigeons on similar timing tasks. They saw initial chaos when extra cues were added. Joana’s team skipped that chaos by starting with prompts and fading them slowly.
Why it matters
If you teach conditional rules that must survive gaps, start with near-errorless prompting. Fade help in small steps. Your learner will reach mastery faster and the skill will stay solid when waits get longer. Try it next time you chain instructions across delays or teach a child to wait for the right moment to act.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In the present study we extended errorless learning to a conditional temporal discrimination. Pigeons' responses to a left-red key after a 2-s sample and to a right-green key after a 10-s sample were reinforced. There were two groups: One learned the discrimination through trial and error and the other through an errorless learning procedure. Then, both groups were presented with three types of tests. First, they were exposed to intermediate durations between 2 s and 10 s, and given a choice between both keys (stimulus generalization test). Second, a delay from 1 s to 16 s was included between the offset of the sample and the onset of the choice keys (delay test). Finally, pigeons learned a new discrimination in which the stimuli were switched (reversal test). Results showed that pigeons from the Errorless group made significantly fewer errors than those in the Trial-and-Error group. Both groups performed similarly during the stimulus generalization test and the reversal test, but results of the delay test suggested that, on long stimulus trials, responding in the errorless training group was less disrupted by delays.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2011 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2011.95-1