Response acquisition by humans with delayed reinforcement.
Neurotypical adults can master a new two-step task even when reinforcement is delayed up to 30 seconds, but kids with developmental disabilities may stall under the same delay.
01Research in Context
What this study did
College students tapped a two-step sequence on a touchscreen. Each correct pair earned points after a wait of 0, 10, 20, or 30 seconds.
A second group got the same delays, but their points were not tied to what they did. The study asked: can people learn a new skill when the payoff is late?
What they found
Only the students who earned points for correct taps learned the sequence. Even with a 30-second delay, their accuracy rose session after session.
The yoked group showed no learning. Delayed reinforcement alone caused the new skill to form.
How this fits with other research
Heinicke et al. (2012) saw the opposite. Kids with developmental disabilities often failed to learn a simple color match when the reinforcer was delayed 20–40 seconds. The gap between studies is the learner: neurotypical adults can bridge a 30-second gap; many children with DD cannot.
Baer et al. (1984) showed preschoolers kept saying and doing the right thing even when the reward came later. Okouchi (2009) extends that work by proving humans can acquire brand-new responses, not just maintain old ones, under delay.
MOORHEARSKELLEHER et al. (1964) first showed rats keep pressing if a light fills the delay. The new study moves the effect from rodent maintenance to human acquisition.
Why it matters
If you teach typical adults, you can relax a little—30-second delays will not block learning. If you teach children with DD, keep the delay under 10 seconds or deliver tokens immediately. Match your timing to the learner, not the procedure.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The present experiment examined whether a response class was acquired by humans with delayed reinforcement. Eight white circles were presented on a computer touch screen. If the undergraduates touched two of the eight circles in a specified sequence (i.e., touching first the upper-left circle then the bottom-left circle), then the touches initiated an unsignaled resetting delay culminating in point delivery. Participants experienced one of three different delays (0 s, 10 s, or 30 s). Rates of the target two-response sequence were higher with delayed reinforcement than with no reinforcement. Terminal rates of the target sequence decreased and postreinforcement pauses increased as a function of delay duration. Other undergraduates exposed to yoked schedules of response-independent point deliveries failed to acquire the sequence. The results demonstrate that a response class was acquired with delayed reinforcement, extending the generality of this phenomenon found with nonhuman animals to humans.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2009 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2009.91-377