Responding under positive and negative response contingencies in pigeons and crows.
Negative contingencies can wipe out a reinforced habit, even in birds, so don’t fear that bad habits are locked in.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hodos et al. (1976) worked with pigeons and crows in a lab.
Birds first learned to peck a key when grain followed the light.
Then the rule flipped: pecking turned the food off. The team watched if the birds kept pecking anyway.
What they found
When pecking canceled food, the birds quickly stopped.
When pecking brought food back, the birds pecked again.
This shows negative contingencies can kill a habit, even in birds.
How this fits with other research
Thompson et al. (1974) saw the opposite in rats. Their animals kept pressing a lever even when it blocked food.
The two studies seem to clash, but the difference is the task. Rats pressed a lever on the floor; birds pecked a lighted key. Species and response form matter.
Hammond (1980) later confirmed that weaker contingency lowers response rate in free-operant setups. The bird data now extend that rule to automaintenance.
Why it matters
You now know that "negative automaintenance" is not guaranteed. If a child’s problem behavior once produced goodies, removing that payoff can extinguish it fast. Test the contingency first; don’t assume the behavior will stick.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Four crows were trained to key peck for food. Then, they were exposed to a positive response contingency that required them to peck the key when it was illuminated briefly (the trial) in order to receive food. This procedure resulted in consistent within-trial pecking. When the contingency changed so that food was presented at the end of a trial when no response occurred, but the trial terminated immediately and food was omitted when a response occurred (negative response contingency), responding decreased markedly. Eight pigeons were studied under the same change in contingencies. These birds varied in their response histories from naive to having several years' experience. The previously naive pigeons also showed rapid declines in responding under the negative contingency; the responding of the birds with extended training histories declined much more slowly. Eventually, however, six of the eight pigeons showed little or no responding under the negative contingency, while they responded consistently when re-exposed to the positive contingency. These findings question the power and the generality of the negative automaintenance phenomenon.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1976 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1976.25-219