Redundant information in an observing-response procedure.
Useful cues keep attention; redundant cues lose it, no matter the effort.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Van Hemel (1973) used a lab box where pigeons could peck a key to see colored lights.
The lights told the bird if the next trial would pay food or not.
Sometimes the lights repeated the same news every trial. Sometimes the bird had to peck many times to see the light.
What they found
When the light always said the same thing, birds soon stopped peeking.
When the bird had to peck extra times to see good-news lights, it kept pecking.
Extra work was worth it only if the cue still gave useful news.
How this fits with other research
Attwood et al. (1988) ran a near-copy study and got the same pattern. They showed food news beats work news: pigeons pecked more for lights that predicted food delivery than for lights that only predicted how many pecks would be needed.
Crane et al. (2008) moved the idea to people. Adults pointed to all parts of a picture to cut over-selectivity. The fix worked right away but vanished once pointing stopped, echoing the 1973 drop when cues turned useless.
Farmer-Dougan et al. (1999) also saw the quick gain and quick loss in learners with ID, showing the bird rule holds across species and skills.
Why it matters
For your client, make each cue earn its keep. If a prompt, picture, or instruction says nothing new, drop it. If the cue still signals big payoff, let the learner work a little to see it. Check often: once the news gets old, observing will stop.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In three observing-response experiments relevant to the information hypothesis of conditioned reinforcement, the basic procedure was one in which an observing response produced one stimulus on trials that terminated in non-contingent reinforcement and another stimulus on trials that terminated in a brief timeout. In Experiment I, the observing response consisted of a single peck or a short fixed-ratio schedule (FR 3 or FR 6), depending on the type of trial. If the single peck produced the negative stimulus and the fixed ratio produced the positive stimulus, observing responses were maintained. If the single peck produced the positive stimulus and the fixed-ratio produced the negative stimulus, observing responses were not maintained on negative trials. In the second experiment, the response key was either white or dark at the beginning of a trial, indicating whether it was a positive or negative trial. Observing responses continued to be maintained on positive trials but not on negative trials. In Experiment III, only positive or negative trials were scheduled for several sessions. Observing responses extinguished regardless of whether positive or negative trials were scheduled. The results do not support the hypothesis that making the stimuli produced by observing responses redundant will reduce observing responses.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1973 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1973.19-81