Evidence of interaction between deprivation effects and stimulus control.

Researchers worked with pigeons on a two-key task. One key color meant food was coming. The other meant no food.

They first trained some birds to very high accuracy. Others got only basic training. Then they tested all birds while hungry and while less hungry.

The well-trained birds kept steady response rates no matter how hungry they were. The less-trained birds sped up and slowed down a lot with hunger changes.

Sharp stimulus control acted like a buffer. It kept motivation swings from knocking performance off track.

Powell et al. (1968) showed that extra discrimination practice makes inhibitory gradients steeper. The current study adds that this same sharpening also shields behavior from deprivation swings.

Timberlake et al. (1987) seems to disagree. They found no effect of food deprivation on drug-discrimination performance. The difference is the task: drug cues stay strong even when hungry, but schedule cues can get fuzzy without good training.

Griffin et al. (1977) narrowed the claim. They showed discrimination training only sharpens control on the exact dimension that was reinforced. So the buffer works only for the trained feature, not everything.

When you teach a new skill, push for high accuracy before you fade prompts. A tight discrimination now can save you later when the client is tired, hungry, or just off. You will see fewer spikes and drops in correct responses when motivation shifts.