Timeout postponement without increased reinforcement frequency.
Animals will peck, press, or tantrum just to delay a timeout, even when the delay brings no extra goodies.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Pigeons pecked a key to delay a short timeout from food. The timeout came every 30 s no matter what they did. A single peck pushed the next timeout back 10 s. The birds got no extra food for pecking. The team wanted to see if pure escape from timeout, with no added reward, could keep the pecking going.
They ran three small tests. In one, longer timeouts arrived if the bird pecked. In another, pecking gave the same food rate. In the third, pecking even cost a little food. The question: would the birds still work just to push the pause button?
What they found
Every bird pecked to postpone the break. Peck rates stayed high even when the pause grew longer or no extra grain appeared. The behavior held across sessions with no extra payoff. The results show that stopping an upcoming timeout is a reward in itself—negative reinforcement without any positive sweetener.
How this fits with other research
Hirota (1971) first showed rats lever-pressing to delay timeout from food. Rose et al. (2000) repeats the trick in pigeons, proving the effect crosses species. Richardson et al. (2008) later found that richer or tastier food makes the escape pecking even faster, adding a parametric twist.
McGee et al. (1983) looks like a clash: their pigeons pecked less when long delays were required. The gap is timing. G used much longer postponement intervals and different key colors. Short, steady delays keep birds busy; long, spotty ones shut them down. Same principle, different settings.
Toegel et al. (2022) widens the lens. They show timeout is most aversive when it clearly signals “food is off.” The 2000 study fits inside that rule: the pause came like clockwork, so the birds knew exactly what they were avoiding.
Why it matters
Your client may work to dodge a break even if the break costs you nothing extra. If a child tantrums to stop your 30-second silence, the escape is the payoff. Try thinning the delay: start with 5 s, then stretch. Signal the pause with a clear cue so the learner knows what to postpone. The bird data say the behavior can stick with no added candy—plan your extinction carefully.
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Join Free →Start a 5-second signaled timeout postponement contingency: one appropriate response adds five seconds before the break begins, then stretch the interval.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Three experiments were conducted to examine pigeons' postponement of signaled extinction periods (timeouts) from a schedule of food reinforcement when such responding neither decreased overall timeout frequency nor increased the overall frequency of food reinforcement. A discrete-trial procedure was used in which a response during the first 5 s of a trial postponed an otherwise immediate 60-s timeout to a later part of that same trial but had no effect on whether the timeout occurred. During time-in periods, responses on a second key produced food according to a random-interval 20-s schedule. In Experiment 1, the response-timeout interval was 45 s under postponement conditions and 0 s under extinction conditions (responses were ineffective in postponing timeouts). The percentage of trials with a response was consistently high when the timeout-postponement contingency was in effect and decreased to low levels when it was discontinued under extinction conditions. In Experiment 2, the response-timeout interval was also 45 s but postponement responses increased the duration of the timeout, which varied from 60 s to 105 s across conditions. Postponement responding was maintained, generally at high levels, at all timeout durations, despite sometimes large decreases in the overall frequency of food reinforcement. In Experiment 3, timeout duration was held constant at 60 s while the response-timeout interval was varied systematically across conditions from 0 s to 45 s. Postponement responding was maintained under all conditions in which the response-timeout interval exceeded 0 s (the timeout interval in the absence of a response). In some conditions of Experiment 3, which were designed to control for the immediacy of food reinforcement and food-correlated (time-in) stimuli, responding postponed timeout but the timeout was delayed whether a response occurred or not. Responding was maintained for 2 of 3 subjects, suggesting that behavior was negatively reinforced by timeout postponement rather than positively reinforced by the more immediate presentation of food or food-correlated (time-in) stimuli.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2000 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2000.74-147