Sensory superstition on multiple interval schedules.

Catania et al. (1982) worked with five pigeons in a small lab chamber.

Each bird saw five different colored lights in a row.

The colors switched every few minutes, but every color gave grain on the same VI 60-s schedule.

The birds never knew which peck would pay off; only the light changed.

Every bird soon pecked at its own special speed for each color.

One bird pecked fast on red and slow on green.

Another bird did the opposite.

The steady, color-linked rates stayed put for weeks, even though the food rate never moved.

WEINELong (1963) saw the same odd, personal styles in rats on simple VI schedules.

That early hint showed idiosyncratic pacing is not new.

Funderburk et al. (1983) came next and looked at choice between signaled and unsignaled food.

They found preference flips with signal length, backing the idea that stimulus cues, not just food, steer behavior.

Spanoudis et al. (2011) pushed the idea into human work.

They showed that fixed-time pay alone can kill vocational responding unless response-based pay rides along.

Together the chain says: schedules matter, but the way the world looks and feels while the schedule runs can matter just as much.

If you run DRL, VI, or FT components, watch the room cues.

A red card, a bell, or even your chair placement can glue superstitious fast or slow rates to each learner.

Rotate stimuli, mix rooms, or add brief delays to keep control with true contingencies, not accidental colors.