The generality of selective observing.
Rats press far more to view stimuli that signal food than those that signal no food, showing selective observing driven by conditioned reinforcement.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Luckett et al. (2002) worked with rats in a small lab chamber. The rats could press a lever to turn on lights for a few seconds.
Some lights always came on before food. Other lights always came on before no food. The team counted how often the rats pressed to see each light.
What they found
The rats pressed far more for the food light. They rarely pressed for the no-food light.
This shows selective observing: animals actively seek stimuli that signal richer reinforcement.
How this fits with other research
The result backs up early pigeon work. Jenkins et al. (1973) first showed pigeons prefer food signals over no-food signals. T et al. repeat the pattern in rats, extending the idea across species.
Jason et al. (1985) looked at humans and saw a twist: people only watched no-food signals when those cues helped them work faster. The rat study removes that utility; the rats still avoid the no-food signal. Together, the two papers show that pure conditioned reinforcement drives animals, while humans also weigh efficiency.
McLean et al. (1981) showed rats prefer any signaled food schedule over an unsignaled one. T et al. go one step further: once signals exist, rats fine-tune their attention toward the best signal.
Why it matters
Your learners, like the rats, will look hardest at cues tied to the best pay-offs. When you set up discriminative stimuli, pair the most important S⁺ with strong reinforcers and keep S⁻ lean. Expect more eye contact, orienting, or card tapping toward the rich cue and little toward the lean. Use that bias to boost engagement during discrimination training and to probe whether your reinforcers are truly valuable.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Four rats obtained food pellets by poking a key and 5-s presentations of the discriminative stimuli by pressing a lever. Every 1 or 2 min, the prevailing schedule of reinforcement for key poking alternated between rich (either variable-interval [VI] 30 s or VI 60 s) and lean (either VI 240 s, VI 480 s, or extinction) components. While the key was dark (mixed-schedule stimulus), no exteroceptive stimulus indicated the prevailing schedule. A lever press (i.e., an observing response), however, illuminated the key for 5 s with either a steady light (S+), signaling the rich reinforcement schedule, or a blinking light (S-), signaling the lean reinforcement schedule. One goal was to determine whether rats would engage in selective observing (i.e., a pattern of responding that maintains contact with S+ and decreases contact with S-). Such a pattern was found, in that a 5-s presentation of S+ was followed relatively quickly by another observing response (which likely produced another 5-s period of S+), whereas exposure to S- resulted in extended breaks from observing. Additional conditions demonstrated that the rate of observing remained high when lever presses were effective only when the rich reinforcement schedule was in effect (S+ only condition), but decreased to a low level when lever presses were effective only during the lean reinforcement component (S- only condition) or when lever presses had no effect (in removing the mixed stimulus or presenting the multiple-schedule stimuli). These findings are consistent with relativistic conceptualizations of conditioned reinforcement and extend the generality of selective observing to procedures in which the experimenter controls the duration of stimulus presentations, the schedule components both offer intermittent food reinforcement, and rats serve as subjects.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2002 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2002.77-171