Transfer across drives of the discriminative effect of a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus.

Scientists paired a light with food for hungry rats. Later the rats were thirsty, not hungry, and the food was gone.

The team asked: will the light still make the rats press the lever even though they now want water, not food?

The light kept the rats pressing. The cue that worked with food still controlled the lever when the drive switched to thirst.

In plain words, the stimulus held power even after the reinforcer and the drive state changed.

Rojahn et al. (1994) extends this idea into humans. After building equivalence classes, one conditioned member passed its emotional pull to every other stimulus in the class.

Rincover et al. (1975) also shows long life: in ducklings, a stimulus paired with movement kept suppressing or boosting behavior for two full days.

Thompson et al. (1974) used almost the same rat lever set-up. Their food-paired light created pressing without any response-food link, matching the basic transfer mechanism seen here.

Your client may want one thing (water break) while the room still holds cues tied to another reinforcer (edibles). This study warns that those cues can keep driving problem behavior even after the original reinforcer is gone and the drive is satisfied. Check what stimuli were paired with powerful reinforcers in the past; they could still control behavior under new conditions today.