Relations between patterns of responding and the presentation of stimuli under second-order schedules.
Brief food-paired stimuli can hold together smooth response patterns under second-order schedules even when the real payoff is far away.
01Research in Context
What this study did
O'leary et al. (1969) looked at pigeons working under second-order schedules. The birds pecked for food, but food only came after long stretches. Short food-paired flashes and tones marked the end of each small chunk.
The team then removed those brief cues. They watched how response patterns and overall rates changed.
What they found
When the food-paired stimuli were present, pigeons produced smooth, positively accelerated patterns within each chunk. Taking the cues away wrecked the neat pattern.
Surprise: without the cues, birds pecked faster overall, but the tidy acceleration disappeared.
How this fits with other research
Cohen (1975) extended the same second-order setup to two choices. Pigeons still chased the cue that ended the shorter chunk, showing the power of these brief stimuli carries into concurrent arrangements.
Bailey et al. (2008) flipped the dependency. They made cues appear without a peck. Observing and discrimination dropped, proving response-produced cues work best.
Reid et al. (2005) later showed kids can keep a discrimination even after the cues are removed. Together the papers trace a line: cues first structure behavior, then control can transfer or fade.
Why it matters
Your client earns a token, hears a brief chime, then keeps working for a distant popcorn party. This study says that tiny chime is doing the heavy lift of keeping the work pattern smooth. If you remove the chime too soon, the pattern may fall apart even though the learner still wants the popcorn. Keep those brief, response-produced signals in place until the behavior is stable, then fade gradually.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Key-pecking behavior in the pigeon was maintained under second-order schedules in which food was presented after a variable number of 2-min fixed-interval components were completed. When either the same stimulus (Exp. I) or different stimuli (Exp. II) appeared on the key during consecutive components, and a stimulus that was occasionally paired with food was presented briefly at completion of each component, (1) patterns of positively accelerated responding were maintained during the components, and, (2) mean response rates were generally as high during the initial components of a sequence as during the later components. In both experiments, when the food-paired stimulus was omitted and either no stimulus or a stimulus never paired with food was presented at completion of each component, mean rates of responding increased, but patterns of positively accelerated responding were not maintained during individual components. When a food-paired stimulus was not presented at completion of the components, mean response rates in Exp. I were low during the initial components of a sequence and gradually increased during subsequent components; in Exp. II mean response rates were variable, and pauses and abrupt changes in response rates were typical.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1969 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1969.12-713