The presence of a temporal discrimination in the conditioned emotional response with humans.

Six college students sat in a small room. A red light came on for three minutes. Near the end, a mild electric shock hit their finger.

The team tracked how much the students pressed a lever for nickels during the red light. They wanted to see if the students would learn when the shock was coming.

Three students stopped pressing just before the shock. One pressed more. Two did not change.

The dip in pressing shows a temporal discrimination. The students learned the last part of the red light meant trouble.

Boren et al. (1970) ran the same CER setup with rats, then waited 25 days. The rats still froze when the red light returned, but they lost the fine timing. The study extends the 1969 finding by showing the timing part is fragile.

Cippola et al. (2014) got the same timing effect with a game instead of shock. Students picked the odd card when a short beep came after a long one. This conceptual replication shows the timing skill is not tied to fear.

Arantes et al. (2011) taught pigeons a timed task with almost no errors. Their errorless method speeds up learning. The pigeon data extend the human CER work by offering a teaching tool for fragile temporal cues.

Your client may learn when the hard task is coming and freeze up. Watch for dips in responding right before the tough part. If timing breaks after a break, re-train the cue. Try errorless prompts to teach new time rules fast.