Peak shift as a function of multiple schedules of reinforcement.
Peak shift grows when the wrong choice pays off even a little — so withhold all payoff from errors.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers worked with pigeons in a small lab chamber.
The birds pecked a colored disk for grain.
Some colors paid off every time. Other colors paid off less often or not at all.
The team changed how often each color gave grain. Then they watched where the birds pecked next.
What they found
When the non-paying color paid off even a little, the birds’ pecking peak moved away from that color.
Less payoff for the bad color made the shift bigger.
Birds that pecked fastest during training showed the clearest shift later.
How this fits with other research
Sainsbury (1971) saw the same idea with children. When a word was paired with candy, kids pressed a button more. Both studies show that pairing anything with payoff changes later choice.
Henson et al. (1979) asked pigeons to pick between sure grain and maybe grain. The birds always went to the side that gave more grain per minute. That lines up with J et al.: rate of payoff, not its certainty, steers behavior.
Shimp et al. (1974) ran in the same lab the same year. They found pigeons stayed longer when a light told them grain was coming. Together the papers say both the signal and the rate matter.
Why it matters
You control payoff rates every day. If a child gets your attention only after three screams, screaming will shift away from polite requests. To move a skill in the right direction, first stop paying the wrong response even a little. Then watch the child’s best response grow stronger.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pigeons were trained to respond to two stimuli on the wavelength continuum, 550 nm and 570 nm, each correlated with an independent schedule of reinforcement. The multiple schedule component in effect during 550 nm (S1) was always a variable-interval 1-min. During the 570-nm stimulus (S2) the second component of the schedule was either variable-interval 30-sec, 1-min, 2-min, 5-min, or extinction for different groups of birds. Generalization gradients were obtained after this training, with the following results: (1) response rate to S1 during training was related to the reinforcement frequency associated with S2; the distribution of responding during generalization testing was a function of the schedules of reinforcement used during training and the response rates they produced. Decreases in the relative frequency of reinforcement correlated with S2 resulted in increases in the distribution shift of responses away from S2 during generalization testing.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1974 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1974.22-463