The effects of amount of training per reversal on successive reversals of a color discrimination.
Longer training blocks before a rule reversal make pigeons—and likely humans—switch stimulus control faster and cleaner.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Glynn (1970) worked with pigeons on a color discrimination task.
The birds had to peck the correct color, then the rule flipped 24 separate times.
Each flip is called a reversal. The team varied how much practice the birds got before each flip.
What they found
More training per reversal made the birds learn faster.
They dropped the old rule sooner and picked up the new rule quicker.
In short, longer blocks of practice sped up every future flip-flop.
How this fits with other research
Anger et al. (1972) extends the idea. They showed that nine days of training cuts responding to brand-new negative stimuli.
Together the papers say: give extra practice not just for speed, but also to block mistakes later.
KELLEHER et al. (1963) looks like a contradiction at first. Their animals had bigger extinction bursts when training was long.
The difference is phase. T’s burst happens when reinforcement stops forever. L’s faster switch happens when reinforcement swaps to the other stimulus.
Long training strengthens both effects: bigger brief burst during extinction, cleaner quicker shift during reversal.
Why it matters
When you teach a learner to pick red vs green, then later swap the rules, run longer teaching blocks first.
The extra practice makes the learner drop the old rule faster and trust the new one sooner.
Try at least nine consistent sessions before you test the swap. You should see fewer errors and quicker switches.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Three groups of pigeons were trained on a red-green discrimination in which the stimuli were alternately presented in a multiple schedule of reinforcement. The discrimination was reversed 24 times. Groups were given 1, 2, or 4 hr of training on each discrimination. Increasing the length of training had two principal effects on reversal performance: it increased the rate of extinction of responding to one of the stimuli and increased the rate of reacquisition of responding to the other. The latter effect involved both an increase in reacquisition of responding to a positive stimulus within reversals and an increase in recovery of responding to the previous negative stimulus between reversals. Improvements in performance of each group over the series of reversals were qualitatively similar to the two effects of length of training on each discrimination, and were analogous to effects obtained in other studies involving overtraining and successive reversals of simultaneous discriminations.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1970 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1970.14-345