Observing responses in pigeons.

Pigeons pecked a key that turned on colored lights. The lights told whether food was coming soon or never.

The birds worked on two schedules. One schedule paid out every 100 pecks on average. The other paid nothing. The key peck that turned on the light is called an observing response.

Birds kept pecking the observing key because the lights acted like news. The light itself was the reward, not the food that followed.

A calming drug called chlorpromazine made the birds peck the observing key even faster, except during the no-food periods.

Aman et al. (1987) later showed pigeons will also peck at plain lights that simply signal upcoming changes, even when those lights bring no food. This widens the 1962 idea: stimulus control can grow without any observing response at all.

THOMAS (1965) gave chlorpromazine to pigeons working a different task. The same drug again raised the target response rate while lowering other behavior. The two studies agree the drug can selectively boost schedule-controlled responses.

Rapport et al. (1982) flipped the idea around. Instead of outside lights, birds used their own prior peck or pause as the cue for the next choice. Both papers show pigeons can treat very different events as useful signals.

When you set up conditional-discrimination drills, remember the cue itself can reinforce the learner's checking behavior. If a child keeps looking at the color card during DTT, the card may be the payoff, not the token that follows. Try adding brief, clear cues that announce the next contingency. Watch whether stimulant or antipsychotic meds change the child's information-seeking responses; the pigeon data say they might.