Replicability of an optimal delay of reinforcement result in instrumental eyelid conditioning.

Abstract

It seems that visual acuity in combination with other variables may be a more important factor in the explanation of hemifield differences in perceptual accuracy than previously believed.

A delay of reinforcement gradient and correlated reinforcement in the instrumental conditioning of conversational behavior.

“…In a social analog of instrumental reward conditioning, employing five levels of delay, Weiss (1967) found negatively accelerated decreasing delay gradients for both response speed and response probability measures. Cerekwicki and Grant (1967) in a study involving five levels of delay found an inverted-U-shaped gradient of eyelid response probablity, and they were careful to demonstrate that this surprising finding was replicable (Cerekwicki, Kantowitz, & Grant, 1969). The results of the present study and other recent studies serve to deepen the mystery of the Cerekwicki and Grant results, particularly where closely comparable time intervals were employed (Karras, 1967), while providing instances of monotonic decreasing gradients in a variety of human conditioning situations.…”

Blinking Bird Brains: A Timing Specific Deficit in Auditory Learning in Quail Hatchlings

“…This result was surprising given the ease with which bobwhite chicks generally form strong preferences for the particular training stimulus used, maternal Call A (see Harshaw & Lickliter, ). Nevertheless, exceptions to strict hyperbolic discounting have been noted (e.g., Cerekwicki & Grant, ; Cerekwicki et al., ; Landauer, ), particularly for “very brief” delays of less than a second (see Schneider, ). Studies of brief unsignaled delay of reinforcement have, for example, often reported an increase in response rate with delayed compared to immediate reinforcement (Arbuckle & Lattal, ; Lattal & Ziegler, ; Richards, ; Sizemore & Lattal, ).…”

“…Although it is a truism in psychophysics and many areas of neuroscience that “timing is everything” when it comes to isolating the workings of a particular cognitive process, thinking about the effects of delay on learning in operant paradigms is dominated by the idea that the potency of reinforcers declines in a straightforward, hyperbolic fashion with increased delay (e.g., Mazur, ; Takahashi et al., ). Studies showing violations of hyperbolic decline with delays of less than one‐second have thus tended to be ignored and/or stand as unexplained anomalies in the literature (e.g., Cerekwicki et al., ; Cerekwicki & Grant, ; Landauer, ; cf. Schneider, ).…”

“…HARSHAW & LICKLITER nious explanation of our findings. Given the utility of operant approaches (e.g., in conjugate reinforcement) and paradigms with embedded operants in developmental work (e.g., infant controlled habituation, gaze-contingent presentation) as well as the fact that violations of hyperbolic discounting with brief (<1 sec) delays have occasionally been reported (e.g., Cerekwicki & Grant, 1967;Cerekwicki, Kantowitz, & Grant, 1969;Landauer, 1964), our findings may be instructive for developmental researchers employing contingencies in studies of infants of other species, including humans.…”