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. 1979 May;31(3):395–403. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1979.31-395

Automaintenance without stimulus-change reinforcement: Temporal control of key pecks1

Joel Myerson, William A Myerson, B Kent Parker
PMCID: PMC1332868  PMID: 16812140

Abstract

Yoked pairs of experimentally naive pigeons were exposed to a modified autoshaping procedure in which key pecking by the leader birds postponed both keylight termination and access to grain for the leader and the follower bird. Key pecking developed and was maintained in all birds and continued through two reversals of roles in the yoked procedure. Although temporal control developed more slowly in follower birds, asymptotic temporal distributions of key pecking were similar for all birds in both leader and follower roles; maximum responding occurred soon after keylight onset and decreased to a minimum prior to reinforcement. Response distributions for both leader and follower birds were described by Killeen's (1975) mathematical model of temporal control. Follower birds received response-independent reinforcement, and the development by these birds of temporal distributions which are minimal immediately prior to reinforcement is without precedent in Pavlovian appetitive conditioning. However, maintenance of key pecking by the leader birds, whose responses postponed both stimulus-change and food reinforcement, supports an interpretation of autoshaped and automaintained key pecking as responding elicited by signaled grain presentation.

Keywords: automaintenance, temporal control, stimulus-change reinforcement, autoshaping, key peck, pigeons

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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