When good pigeons make bad decisions: Choice with probabilistic delays and outcomes.
Extra cues that predict nothing can fool clients into picking worse schedules, so keep reinforcement signals clean and useful.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers let pigeons pick between two keys. One key gave food every time. The other key gave food only half the time.
When no food came, a bright light still flashed during the wait. Birds could see the light and keep pecking.
What they found
The birds chose the worse key. They picked the 50% food key even though it gave less food.
The flashing light acted like a tiny reward. It kept the birds coming back for nothing.
How this fits with other research
Geckeler et al. (2000) saw the same thing in kids with ID. Children also chased unreliable prizes when fun lights and sounds were in the mix.
Fantino et al. (2010) looked at adult humans. People avoided bad-news signals and worked only for good-news cues, matching the pigeon data.
McDevitt et al. (2016) later wrapped these studies together. Their review says "good-news" signals, even when meaningless, glue sub-optimal choices across species.
Why it matters
Your client might pick a 50% praise schedule if the room fills with exciting tablets, songs, or even your own enthusiastic face. Strip the show. Keep reinforcement lean, immediate, and clear. Drop extra lights, sounds, or words that predict nothing. Make the best choice also the brightest cue.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Remove any lights, sounds, or words that appear during non-reinforced trials.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pigeons chose between an (optimal) alternative that sometimes provided food after a 10-s delay and other times after a 40-s delay and another (suboptimal) alternative that sometimes provided food after 10 s but other times no food after 40 s. When outcomes were not signaled during the delays, pigeons strongly preferred the optimal alternative. When outcomes were signaled, choices of the suboptimal alternative increased and most pigeons preferred the alternative that provided no food after the long delay despite the cost in terms of obtained food. The pattern of results was similar whether the short delays occurred on 25% or 50% of the trials. Shortening the 40-s delay to food sharply reduced suboptimal choices, but shortening the delay to no food had little effect. The results suggest that a signaled delay to no food does not punish responding in probabilistic choice procedures. The findings are discussed in terms of conditioned reinforcement by signals for good news.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2015 · doi:10.1002/jeab.177