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CONTEXT SPECIFICITY OF CONDITIONED‐REINFORCEMENT EFFECTS ON DISCRIMINATION ACQUISITION
Author(s) -
Williams Ben A.,
Dunn Roger
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.1994.62-157
Subject(s) - stimulus (psychology) , facilitation , reinforcement , psychology , discrimination learning , audiology , differential reinforcement , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , social psychology , medicine
Pigeons were trained on a series of reversals of a simultaneous form discrimination in which the trial outcomes were separated from the choice responses by an 8‐s delay interval. Different conditions were defined by the stimuli occurring during the two halves of the delay interval. Discrimination learning was greatly facilitated by having differential stimuli during the delay following correct versus incorrect choices. When the differential stimuli appeared only at the midpoint of the delay, some facilitation occurred relative to when no different stimuli occurred, but there was substantially less facilitation than when the differential stimuli occurred immediately contingent on choice. A reversed‐stimulus condition, in which the stimulus at the onset of the delay following a correct choice was the same as that during the last segment of the delay following an incorrect choice, and the stimulus at the onset of the delay following an incorrect choice was the same as that preceding food during the last segment of the delay following a correct choice, also facilitated discrimination learning relative to the nondifferential stimulus conditions.