Journal of Experimental Psychology: Copyright 1990 by the American Psychological Association. Inc.

Animal Behavior Processes 0097-7403/90/$00.75

1990, Vol. 16, No. 1,27-39

Response Acquisition With Delayed Reinforcement

Kennon A. Lattal and Suzanne Gleeson
West Virginia University

Discrete responses of experimentally naive, food-deprived White Carneaux pigeons (key pecks)
or Sprague-Dawley rats (bar or omnidirectional lever presses) initiated unsignaled delay periods
that terminated with food delivery. Each subject first was trained to eat from the food source,
but no attempt was made to shape or to otherwise train the response. In both species, the response
developed and was maintained. Control procedures excluded the simple passage of time, response
elicitation or induction by food presentation, type of operandum, food delivery device location,
and adventitious immediate reinforcement of responding as the basis for the effects. Results
revealed that neither training nor immediate reinforcement is necessary to establish new behavior.
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The conditions that give rise to both the first and second response are discussed, and the results
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are related to other studies of the delay of reinforcement and to explanations of behavior based
on contingency or correlation and contiguity.

Response acquisition had been cast in various ways
throughout the history of the analysis of learned behavior.
Response acquisition was central in many early learning
theories (e.g., Guthrie, 1935; Hull, 1943), but for other learn-
ing theorists, like Skinner (1938), the acquisition of behavior
was of less concern than the maintenance of behavior. Skin-
ner's (1953) technique of response shaping through the differ-
ential reinforcement of successive approximations at once
acknowledged the continuity of behavior and the importance
of reinforcement contingencies in the acquisition of behavior,
but it relegated actual response development to the status of
a technical problem to be surmounted on the way to studying
response maintenance. Following Skinner's lead, Sidman
(1960, pp. 118-119) conceptualized response acquisition as a
transition from one steady-state behavioral baseline to an-
other in which the pretraining baseline level of behavior is
unknown but often assumed incorrectly to be zero.
Skinner (1953) likened response shaping to sculpting a
lump of clay:
At no point does anything emerge which is very different from
what preceded it. The final product seems to have a special unity
... but we cannot find a point at which this suddenly appears
... an operant is not something which appears full grown in the
behavior of the organism. It is the result of a continuous shaping
process, (p. 91).
Thus, even though "the original probability of the response
in its final form is very low, in some cases it may even be
zero.... By reinforcing a series of approximations we bring a
rare response to a very high probability in a short time"
(Skinner, 1953, p. 92).
Matthew Lattal was instrumental in conducting Experiments 3
and 6, as was Eileen Dello in conducting Experiments 1, 2, 4, and 5.
In addition, they both provided valuable assistance with the data
analysis. We also thank Ann Davis for her help with the manuscript
and Marty Kuhar for his work on pilot experiments that culminated
in the present experiments.
Suzanne Gleeson is now at the Uniformed Services University of
the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Kennon A. Lattal, Department of Psychology, West Virginia Univer-
sity, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506-6040.
27
Although response shaping long has been the sine qua non
of response acquisition, other procedures have been proffered
for the establishment of new responses, including response
priming (Ferster & Skinner, 1957; Reid, French, & Pollard,
1969), autoshaping (Brown & Jenkins, 1968; Skinner, 1971),
imitation (Neuringer & Neuringer, 1974), and guided practice
(Gibson, 1966; Konorski & Miller, 1937). Skinner (1953)
noted that "if in reinforcing [a response] we simply wait for
it to occur—and we may have to wait many hours or days or
weeks—the whole unit appears to emerge in its final form
and to be strengthened as such" (p. 92). Previously, Skinner
(1938, pp. 70-71) had described the use of such an acquisition
procedure with rats' bar press responding. Ferster and Skinner
advanced Skinner's (1953) suggestion as one technique for
establishing key pecking by pigeons, noting that "a well-
adapted pigeon will usually peck at the key during a 1-hour
experimental session" (Ferster & Skinner, 1957, p. 31); how-
ever, the proposal was strictly technical, and no data were
reported. Neuringer (1970) placed experimentally naive, food-
deprived, magazine-trained pigeons in an operant condition-
ing chamber containing an illuminated response key. No
attempt was made to shape or elicit the response, but after an
average of 176 min, a key-peck response occurred and was
followed by immediate reinforcement. Following three such
immediately reinforced key pecks, a procedure unrelated to
the present exposition was implemented.
Each of the procedures to establish responding described
previously involved immediate reinforcement, either of the
target response or of an approximation to it, in accordance
with Skinner's (1953) suggestion that "the reinforcement
which develops skills must be immediate" (p. 96). In studies
of delayed reinforcement effects on response maintenance
extensive training with immediate reinforcement precedes the
introduction of delays (e.g., Ferster, 1953; Pierce, Hanford, &
Zimmerman, 1972). In addition, a distinct stimulus (signal)
during the delay was common in early studies of delay of
reinforcement and confounded the delay effect with that of
an immediately-produced stimulus that was perfectly corre-
lated with food delivery.
In other experiments, attempts were made to establish
discrete bar press responding with delayed reinforcement (e.g.,
 28 KENNON A. LATTAL AND SUZANNE GLEESON
Harker, 1956; Logan, 1952; Seward & Weldon, 1953), but
the training procedures either were unclear or an immediate
consequence followed the response. Harker (1956) reported
acquisition of bar pressing by rats when each response pro-
duced a reinforcer after a 10-s delay. If a bar press failed to
occur within 30 s on any trial, however, the response "was
elicited by holding a peflet of food in the slot above the bar"
(Harker, 1956, p. 305). Thus, the possibility for immediate
reinforcement occurred on those trials because such elicited
responses were followed by obtaining the food pellet in the
slot. Logan (1952) and Seward and Weldon (1953) placed
experimentally naive rats in a chamber with a retractable
lever. A response on the lever resulted in its immediate
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withdrawal, followed by delays of up to 10 s that ended with
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the delivery of a food pellet. In both experiments, food pellets
were delivered in the absence of the lever, and its absence was
the immediate consequence of a response. None of these three
experiments cited Skinner's (1938) description of response
acquisition with delayed reinforcement by rats. Although the
details were sketchy, Skinner reported response acquisition
when the reinforcer occurred up to 8 s following a bar press
of experimentally naive rats.
In the experiments that follow, we investigated response
acquisition with delayed reinforcement. We analyzed discrete
responses, key pecks by pigeons and bar or omnidirectional
lever presses of rats, that were untrained. The use of unsig-
naled delay intervals (cf. Sizemore & Lattal, 1978) eliminated
the effects of immediately produced stimuli correlated with
the delay interval and, ultimately, food delivery.
Experiment 1
Method
Subjects. Fourteen experimentally naive male White Carneaux
pigeons (Colutnba livia; retired breeders), obtained from Palmetto
Pigeon Plant in Sumter, South Carolina, were used. Each was housed
individually with continuous access to water and health grit and was
maintained at 70% of its ad libitum weight.
Apparatus. A Ralph Gerbrands Company Model G7311 operant
conditioning chamber, 32 cm high by 28 cm wide by 31 cm long,
was used. The work panel contained two 2.0-cm diameter translucent
response keys. Each was 7.5 cm from the midline of the work panel
and 25.5 cm above the grid floor. Either key could be transilluminated
by a red light (two #327 Chicago miniature lamp bulbs; 28 vdc; .04
A each). The left was recessed 7 mm from the external surface of the
work panel. This is a standard arrangement of response keys in pigeon
chambers. A key extension, previously described by Wesp, Lattal,
and Poling (1977), was attached to the right key. The extension was
a 1.5-cm diameter piece of clear plastic, cut from the bottom of a
plastic solder tube container and glued onto the surface of the
response key. It protruded 8 mm past the external surface of the work
panel. Because the tube was clear, it did not interfere with the light
transilluminating the response key. Each key required a force of 0.15
N to operate. A 5 cm by 5 cm aperture, through which a food hopper
containing mixed grain was available, was centered on the work panel
8.5 cm from the chamber floor. Reinforcement was 8-s access to the
hopper, during which the hopper aperture was illuminated by a white
light and the response key light was turned off. The chamber was
housed in a sound/light attenuating chamber (Ralph Beigrands Com-
pany Model G7210) in which a ventilating fan masked extraneous
noise. A PDF 8a minicomputer, using SuperSKED software, provided
experimental control and recording of data.
Procedure. On reaching its running weight, each pigeon was
placed in the chamber and trained to eat from the food hopper. After
15-20 min of acclimation to the chamber, the food hopper (or
magazine) was raised and illuminated until the pigeon ate from it for
several seconds. The hopper was lowered, then presented again a few
seconds later until eating again occurred. When the pigeon ate from
the hopper on each of three successive hopper presentations, a vari-
able-time (VT) 30-s schedule of 8-s hopper presentations was imple-
mented. Hopper training continued until the pigeon ate from the
hopper on each of 25 successive response-independent hopper pres-
entations with a latency of no more than 2 s between the hopper
presentation and the onset of eating.
During hopper training, and throughout the remainder of the
experiment, the chamber was illuminated only by the key light, which
was extinguished during hopper presentations. For 11 of the pigeons,
only the right key was illuminated, and for 3, only the left was
illuminated.
Following the last response-independent hopper presentation, the
VT schedule was replaced by one of three conditions for different
pigeons. For 5 pigeons in the presence of the illuminated right
response key, which included the key extension, a tandem fixed ratio
1 fixed time 30-s schedule (tandem FR 1 FT 30-s) was effected. The
red key light remained on during both the FR and FT components.
A peck to this key initiated a 30-s interval that terminated with 8-s
access to the food hopper. Pecks during the delay interval had no
effect, that is, the delay was nonresetting. Hereafter, this will be
identified as the key-extension (KE) condition. Three pigeons were
exposed to an extinction condition in the presence of the illuminated
right key with the key extension. Pecking was recorded but it had no
consequence throughout the experiment. Three other pigeons were
exposed to a variable-time schedule of response-independent food
presentation in the presence of the right key light with the key
extension. The frequency and distribution of response-independent
reinforcers for each subject was yoked to that of one of the subjects
exposed to the tandem FR 1 FT 30-s schedule. The final 3 pigeons
were exposed to a tandem FR 1 FT 30-s schedule in the presence of
the left key light with no key extension. Hereafter, this latter condition
will be identified as the no-key-extension (NKE) condition.
Each condition was in effect for 20-25 sessions. Sessions occurred
once daily, 7 days a week. Session durations for each subject in the
KE, VT, and extinction conditions are shown in Table 1. The data
in parentheses adjacent to the total responses in each session are the
session durations in minutes for the indicated pigeon. The session
duration for the VT and extinction pigeons was equivalent to that of
the key-extension pigeon in the corresponding location in the table
(e.g., the session duration for Pigeons 1591, 4822, and 3860 were
identical). Pigeon 4214 had no yoked equivalents in the other two
conditions. Sessions terminated after 45 reinforeers were delivered
with the following exceptions. Initially, the session duration for the
NKE subjects was yoked to that of the KE subjects. Once pecking
began by the NKE subjects, session duration was no longer yoked in
this way, and sessions were terminated after 45 reinforcers. Early
during training, it sometimes was necessary to terminate a session
because of an absence or a very low frequency of pecking by the
pigeons in the KE condition.
Results
The left graphs of Figure 1 show response rates during each
session for each pigeon in the KE condition. Following the
end of hopper training, there usually was a pause of several
minutes to several hours followed by a single key peck. As
 RESPONSE ACQUISITION WITH DELAYED REINFORCEMENT 29

Table 1
Total Number of Session Responses (n) and Session Duration (Rounded to Nearest Whole Number) for Each Pigeon in the
Key Extension (KE), Variable Time (VT), and Extinction (Ext) Conditions and Sessions With One or More Responses in
Experiment 1
KE condition pigeons VT condition pigeons Ext condition
pigeons
1591 5354 5464 4214 4822 10765 4677 3860 4267 5850
Session n Min n Min n Min n Min n n n n n n
1 76 171 38 696 19 310 20 100 0 7 I 3 1 2
2 84 334 12 56 67 405 71 211 16 51 7 —1 1
3 28 289 386 284 418 135 60 97 0 —2 3 1 1
4 144 230 631 39 271 40 68 127 2 1 0 0 0 0
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5 237 64 252 58 177 52 60 115 1 0 0 1 0 0

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6 181 65 202 44 331 40 69 117 1 1 0 0 1 0

7 169 51 297 35 242 53 74 81 1 0 1 0 0 0
8 96 158 264 46 120 53 19 30 0 1 0 1 0 0
9 99 86 106 65 119 86 61 138 1 3 0 0 0 0
10 138 96 122 97 138 47 61 127 0 2 0 0 0 0
11 299 37 178 70 123 54 55 140 0 3 0 0 0 0
12 213 36 600 48 173 56 61 147 0 5 2 0 0 0
13 527 37 529 40 187 45 57 121 0 1 0 0 0 0
14 732 27 416 49 270 36 61 129 0 4 3 0 0 0
15 492 30 274 54 186 77 61 148 0 10 3 0 0 0
16 794 27 790 45 233 40 62 144 0 6 7 0 0 0
17 737 28 468 47 176 44 53 164 0 3 8 0 0 0
18 643 32 485 44 194 31 49 196 0 4 2 0 0 0
19 495 37 708 33 210 38 48 176 0 0 0 0 0 0
20 411 35 459 41 188 86 47 118 0 5 3 0 0 0
21 439 30 334 47 133 61 4 4 0 0
22 742 33 246 62 271 51 3 10 0 0
23 670 33 280 69 194 64 1 10 0 0
24 645 32 370 39 165 79 12 0 0 0
25 455 29 298 46 166 42 2 1 0 0
Total 9,547 8,745 4,771 1,070 22 80 109 13 3 4
No. sessions with
> 1 response 25 25 25 20 6 21 15 5 3 3
Note. Dashes indicate missing data.

time passed, the frequency of pecking increased gradually
until an asymptotic role of pecking was reached after a few
sessions. One bird in the KE condition responded seven times
in the second session, twice in the third session, and not at all
in any of the next five sessions (a total of 32 hr). The data
from this bird will not be discussed further.
Table 1 shows the total number of responses during each
session for each bird in the KE, extinction, and VT conditions.
Each of the pigeons in the VT condition pecked the key at
irregular intervals, and this behavior did not persist within a
session. Similarly, each of the birds in the extinction condition
pecked the key during one or more of the first few sessions,
but not thereafter.
For each pigeon in the conditions KE, VT, and extinction
(each of which included a key extension), the total amount of
time from the end of hopper training to the first key peck
were as follows, Pigeon 1591 = 5.0 min, Pigeon 4214 = 63.0
min, Pigeon 5354 = 31.0 min, Pigeon 5464 = 7.5 min, Pigeon
4822 = 57.5 min, Pigeon 10765 = 4.6 min, Pigeon 4677 =
20.5 min, Pigeon 3860 = 1.0 min, Pigeon 4267 = 597.5 min,
and Pigeon 5850 = 14.7 min. For Pigeon 4822, the first peck
occurred in Session 2, for the other pigeons listed here, it
occurred in Session 1. Given that the one additional pigeon
in the KE condition pecked only after about 600 min of
exposure and stopped soon thereafter, the ranges of these
times among the different conditions substantially overlap
one another.
The right graphs of Figure 1 show response rates during
each session for the pigeons exposed to the NKE condition.
The graph for each bird is juxtaposed to that of its yoked
counterpart in the KE condition. Each of these birds eventu-
ally pecked the response key, and responding occurred
throughout each of the remaining sessions at rates equivalent
to or higher than those observed in the KE birds. However,
recorded key pecks developed only after 8 sessions for Pigeon
4794. Pigeon 10718 pecked once during the first session but
did not peck again until the ninth session. Pigeon 4762 pecked
consistently beginning with the second session.
Pecks during the unsignaled delay interval had no conse-
quence and, as a result, it was possible for the obtained delays
to be considerably less than the nominal 30-s delay. Figure 2
shows the actual (obtained) delays between the last key peck
and food delivery for each of the first 20 reinforcers that were
delivered to each pigeon in the unsignaled delay conditions.
 30 KENNON A. LATTAL AND SUZANNE GLEESON

18«1 (KE) 47S4 (NKE)

too too sessions for Pigeon 5464 in the KE condition and for Pigeons
4794 and 10718 in the NKE condition.
to 10

t 1 A" Discussion
.1 .1 (T These results illustrate the acquisition of new behavior by
pigeons without response shaping or other explicit training
.01 .01
and when the consequence follows some time after the re-
1
,001 sponse is emitted.
The results of the extinction condition indicate that sus-
tained key pecking in the absence of food delivery is minimal
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(K£)
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SUCCESSIVE SESSIONS 10 15 20
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Figure 1. Responses per minute for each pigeon in the key-extension

5464 (KE) 47»2 (NKE)
(KE; left graphs) and the no-key-extension (NKE; right graphs) de-
layed reinforcement conditions during each session of Experiment 1.
(The dashed line demarks 1 response per minute; where lines touch
the x axis, the number of responses was 0.)

The left and right graphs, respectively, show the data for
pigeons exposed to the KE and the NKE conditions. Many
of the delays were 30 s, most were at least 10 s, and only a
few were less than 5 s. Except for Pigeon 10718, delays of 1 s
or less were rare between the last response in an interval and
the subsequent delivery of food. The mean obtained delay for SUCCESSIVE REINFORCERS
each session varied for different pigeons in the delay condi- Figure 2. Obtained delays in seconds between the last key peck
tions between 5 s and 28 s. The mean obtained delays did not preceding food delivery and food delivery for each of the first 20
change systematically across sessions for Pigeons 1591, 4214, reinforcers for each pigeon in the key-extension (KE; left graphs) and
and 5354 in the KE condition nor for Pigeon 4762 in the the no-key-extension (NKE; right graphs) conditions of Experiment
NKE condition. These mean delavs decreased somewhat over
 RESPONSE ACQUISITION WITH DELAYED REINFORCEMENT
or nonexistent. The results of the yoked VT condition suggest
that elicitation or induction of responding by food presenta-
tion does not account for the frequent and persistent key
pecking observed in the unsignaled delay conditions. The
substantial overlap in time to the first key peck in the subjects
exposed to the KE, VT, and extinction suggest that the effects
obtained in the delayed reinforcement condition do not reflect
sampling errors from the accidental assignment of more active
birds to the KE and NKE conditions.
The differences in the time to the first key peck between
the KE and NKE conditions are suggestive but not conclusive.
One potential limitation is that the two keys were in different
locations and, it is possible, though unlikely, that the 10 birds
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exposed to the KE condition were biased toward pecking the
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right key. Nonetheless, the key-extension does seem to capture
pecking responses earlier, but the results of the NKE group
indicate that such an extension is not necessary to obtain
reliable responding.
The effects of obtained delays on the development and
maintenance of key pecking warranted further study. Al-
though there were few instances of response-reinforcer tem-
poral contiguity, some delays were relatively short, and the
delays within each session were variable. It is known that only
a few instances of temporal contiguity within a session can
sustain responding above that sustained by response-inde-
pendent reinforcement (e.g., Lattal, Freeman, & Critchfield,
1989). Perhaps those instances of relatively short delays ac-
count for the response-sustaining effects of the procedure.
This possibility was considered in the next experiment.
Experiment 2
In this experiment, acquisition of key pecking by pigeons
was studied when reinforcement was delayed until 10 s had
occurred between the last key peck in an interval and the
delivery of food.
Method
Subjects. Five experimentally naive male White Carneaux pi-
geons (retired breeders) were used Each was housed as described in
Experiment 1 and was maintained at 70% of its ad libitum body
weight.
Apparatus. The operant conditioning chamber was similar to that
described in the first experiment except that the response key was
located on the midline of the work panel, 19.5 cm from the floor. A
key extension identical to that described in Experiment 1 was attached
to the surface of the response key. The key was transilluminated by
a red 28 Vac light at all times except during reinforcement. The
apparatus otherwise replicated that described in the first experiment,
except that the experiment was controlled by electromechanical
equipment.
Procedure. Hopper training was the same as that described in the
first experiment. Following the last hopper presentation, the VT
schedule was replaced by a tandem VI 30-s differential-reinforcement-
of-other-behavior(DRO) 10-s schedule. Following an average interval
of 30 s since the last reinforcement (range = 5-60 s, arithmetic
progression), the first key peck initiated a 10-s unsignaled delay
interval. Each response during the delay interval postponed food
delivery by 10 s, insuring that the delay between the last key peck
and food delivery always was 10 s. This type of delay procedure
sometimes is described as a resetting delay. The red key light remained
31
illuminated in both the VI and the DRO components. This condition
was in effect for 30 daily sessions, each of which terminated after 40
reinforcers were delivered.
Results
Each of the 5 pigeons pecked the response key. Two patterns
of response acquisition were observed. One of the pigeons
(3538) pecked the response key soon after magazine training
was complete and continued to peck the key relatively fre-
quently for several sessions before response rates stabilized at
considerably lower but steady levels. The others responded
after varying periods in the chamber. Once responding devel-
oped, it continued at rather low but steady rates in each of
the subsequent sessions. The data in Figure 3 summarize the
response rates during each session of the experiment.
Discussion
Key pecking again developed in the absence of response
shaping or other training. Unlike the first experiment, how-
ever, the delay between the last response and the subsequent
reinforcer was constant at 10 s, thereby precluding adventi-
tious temporal contiguity between these two events.
Experiment 3
The results of the VT condition of Experiment 1 illustrate
that the behavior developed and maintained by delayed re-
inforcement is not simply behavior induced or elicited directly
by the delivery of food. It is possible, however, that the
delivery of food from a hopper biases orientation toward that
food source. If the food source and operandum are located in
relatively close proximity (e.g., on the work panel), as they
were in the first two experiments, the bird may be more likely
to orient toward the response key and, therefore, be more
likely to peck the key. In this experiment, the food hopper
and response key were located on opposite walls of the cham-
ber to assess whether the hopper-operandum configuration
was critical in response acquisition with delayed reinforce-
ment.
Method
Subjects. Four experimentally naive male White Carneaux pi-
geons (retired breeders) were used. Each was housed as described in
Experiment 1 and was maintained at 70% of its ad libitum body
weight.
Apparatus. The apparatus was identical to that in Experiment 2
except that the food hopper was removed from the work panel and
located behind a 5 cm by 5 cm aperture in the rear wall of the
chamber, that is, in the wall facing the response key.
Procedure. The procedure was identical to that followed in Ex-
periment 2, except that the procedure was studied for 10 sessions.
Results
Three of the 4 pigeons responded during the first session,
and the 4th (Pigeon 7013) first responded in the fifth session.
Figure 4 shows that response rates across the 10 sessions were
low but consistent. In addition, responding throughout the
 32 KENNON A. LATTAL AND SUZANNE GLEESON

34-90 3494 3538

10 10 10

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n 5 10 15 20 25 5 1O 15 2O 25 5 1O 15 2O 25
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

3630 423O
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SUCCESSIVE SESSIONS
Figure 3. Responses per minute for each pigeon during each session of Experiment 2. (The dashed
line demarks 1 response per minute; where lines touch the x axis, the number of responses was 0.)

session was steady. Visual observation of the pigeons indicated
that, once the first response occurred, each paced back and
forth in front of the panel containing the operandum, occa-
sionally pecking the key. Each pigeon would turn and ap-
proach the food hopper only after it was raised and illumi-
nated.
Discussion
These results replicate those of Experiment 2 and addition-
ally show that hopper location is not important in response
acquisition with delayed reinforcement. Neither key orienta-
tion nor key pecking is simply a by-product of the control of
orientation to the panel containing the operandum because
the food source also is located there.
Experiment 4
Each of the first three experiments utilized pigeons as
subjects. The development of responding under the conditions
in these experiments might be unique to pigeons, given their
propensity to peck at objects. Autoshaping (Brown & Jenkins,
1968), for example, is relatively easy to develop with pigeons,
and it is possible that some combination of phylogenic and
ontogenic variables may uniquely predispose the pigeon to
peck under the present contingencies as well. Skinner's (1938)
results, described earlier, suggest that such acquisition also
may occur in rats. In the fourth experiment, Skinner's finding
with rats was systematically replicated using slightly longer
delays, multiple sessions, and appropriate control conditions.
Method
Subjects. Each of 10 experimentally naive female Sprague-Daw-
ley rats (Rattus norvegicus), 120 days old at the beginning of the
experiment, was maintained at 70% of its ad libitum body weight.
Rat 34 died from unknown causes after the seventh session of the
experiment.
Apparatus. A Ralph Gerbrands Company Model G7010 rat
chamber was enclosed in a sound-attenuating, ventilated enclosure.
The chamber was 20.5 cm wide by 19.5 cm high by 23.5 cm long.
The work panel contained a rat bar (Gerbrands Model G6312) that
required a force of approximately 0.25 N to operate, a feeder dish,
and a houselight. The center of the bar was 8.0 cm from the floor.
The houselight was illuminated continuously during the session.
Reinforcers were single 45-mg standard Noyes pellets. Electrome-
chanical equipment in an adjacent room was used to control the
experiment.
Procedure. Each rat was placed in the houselight-illuminated
chamber. After 15-20 min of acclimation to the chamber, a food
pellet was delivered. After the rat located and ate the first food pellet,
a second pellet was delivered. This procedure continued until the rat
approached the feeder dish and retrieved the pellet immediately
following operation of the feeder on three successive pellet presenta-
tions. When this occurred, a VT 30-s schedule of pellet delivery was
 RESPONSE ACQUISITION WITH DELAYED REINFORCEMENT
implemented, and it remained in effect until the rat approached the
food dish and ate the pellet within 2 s of its delivery on each of 20
successive food pellet presentations. Bar presses during this phase,
which rarely occurred, were recorded but had no effect other than
postponing food delivery by 10s.
Immediately following the last response-independent pellet pres-
entation, the VT schedule was replaced by one of three conditions.
For 4 rats, a tandem VI 30-s DRO 10-s schedule was effected. After
an average of 30 s (range = 5-60, with an arithmetic progression),
the first response initiated a 10-s unsignaled delay interval during
which each response restarted the interval. When 10 s elapsed from
the last response in the delay, a food pellet was delivered, and the VI
component was reinstated. Three rats were exposed to a variable-
time (VT) schedule in which the frequency and distribution of re-
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sponse-independent food pellets was equal to the average frequency
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and distribution of food pellets received by the subjects exposed to
the tandem VI 30-s DRO 10-s schedule. Three other rats were exposed
to an extinction condition in which bar press responses were recorded
but were without consequence.
Each condition was in effect for 10 daily sessions. Sessions for the
rats in the tandem VI 30-s DRO 10-s condition terminated after
about 1 hr, with the exception that, in the first 2 sessions, session
duration ranged from 65 min to 250 min for different rats. The
duration of each session for each rat in the VT and extinction
1496
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SUCCESSIVE SESSIONS
Figure 4. Responses per minute for each pigeon during each session of Experiment 3. (The dashed
line demarks 1 response per minute; where lines touch the x axis, the number of responses was 0.)
33
condition was equal to the average session duration for the equivalent
unsignaled delay session.
Results
Figure 5 shows response rates during each session for the
rats exposed to the tandem VI 30-s DRO 10-s schedule. For
3 subjects, bar pressing developed in the first session after 10,
23, and 4 min, respectively, for Rats 32, 33, and 35. Rat 34
responded after 236 min, divided between two sessions. Once
bar pressing started, it continued at a slow steady rate during
each session and persisted in this manner throughout the
remaining nine sessions of the experiment.
The total number of responses for each rat in the unsignaled
delay, VT, and extinction condition is shown in Table 2.
Responding in the VT and extinction conditions occurred
only rarely. Rats 42 and 45 (extinction condition) first bar
pressed 32 min and 13 min, respectively, into the first session.
Rat 2 (extinction condition) bar pressed approximately 12
times during food magazine training but did not respond
thereafter. In the VT condition, Rat 3 did not respond, Rat
39 responded first after 3 min of the first session, and Rat 36
3987
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5 10
7013
10
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10
 34 KENNON A. LATTAL AND SUZANNE GLEESON

10 10
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

5 10 10
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SUCCESSIVE SESSIONS
Figure 5. Responses per minute for each rat in the unsignaled delay condition during each session of
Experiment 4. (The dashed line demarks 1 response per minute; where lines touch the x axis, the
number of responses was 0.)

responded first in Session 7, after a total of 614 min of Experiment 5

exposure to the VT schedule.
Discussion
These results extend to rats the development and mainte-
nance of new behavior with delayed reinforcement in the
absence of explicit response training. As in Experiment 2, the
possibility of accidental temporal contiguity between the re-
sponse and the reinforcer was precluded. The failure of re-
sponding to develop in the extinction and VT conditions
suggests that, respectively, the passage of time and the elici-
tation or induction of responding by the reinforcer are not
important in the development of such responding by rats
under an unsignaled delay of reinforcement condition. As
with the pigeons, there was considerable variability in the
time to the first response, but systematic differences in this
time did not occur between subjects in the three groups,
suggesting that the effects were not related to sampling error
in assignments of subjects to conditions.
Skinner (1938) studied response acquisition with delays of
up to only 8 s, and the DRO contingency in Experiment 4
insured that a reinforcer could not occur within 10 s of a bar-
press response. Experiment 6 extended this unsignaled reset-
ting delay interval to 30 s, which has been shown in studies
of operant delay of reinforcement to substantially reduce
behavior (Gleeson & Lattal, 1987; Pierce et al., 1972) previ-
ously maintained by immediate reinforcement.
Method
Subjects. Each of 4 experimentally naive female Sprague-Dawley
rats, 120 days old at the beginning of the experiment, was maintained
at 70% of its ad libitum body weight.
Apparatus. The apparatus was identical to that used in Experi-
ment 4.
Procedure. The procedure was similar to the unsignaled delay
condition of Experiment 1, except that a 30-s DRO requirement was
in effect. This yielded a tandem FR 1 DRO 30-s schedule in which
 RESPONSE ACQUISITION WITH DELAYED REINFORCEMENT 35

Table 2
Total Number of Responses for Each Rat in the Unsignaled Delay (Delay), Variable Time
(VT), and Extinction (Ext) Conditions and the Number of Sessions With One or More
Responses in Experiment 4
Delay condition rats VT condition Ext condition
rats rats
Session 32 33 34 35 3 36 39 2 42 45
1 90 459 0 255 0 0 4 0 1 2
2 303 76 233 293 0 0 0 0 0 4
3 205 165 187 241 0 0 1 0 0 0
4 271 242 398 385 0 0 0 0 0 5
5 418 211 364 384 0 0 0 0 0 0
6 381 291 115 244 0 0 0 0 0 0
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7 424 432 243 236 0 1 0 0 0 0

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

g 423 300 218 0 1 0 0 0 0

9 209 353 239 0 0 0 0 0 0
10 232 376 351 0 0 0 0 0 0
Total 2,956 2,905 1,540 2,846 0 2 5 0 1 11
No, sessions with
3:1 response 10 10 6 10 0 2 2 0 1 2

the first response after a reinforcer initiated an unsignaled delay
period in which each subsequent response postponed food pellet
delivery by 30 s.
The condition was in effect for 20 sessions. Each session terminated
after about 60 min, with the exception of the first 3 sessions, which
ranged from 60 min to 304 min for different rats.
Results
One rat did not bar press after magazine training and 12 hr
of experimentation. Figure 6 provides response rates during
each session for each of the 3 rats that developed responding.
For each of these rats, responding that developed in the first
session occurred at slow steady rates throughout each session.
Responding tended to increase somewhat across the 20 ses-
sions.
Discussion
Despite an extended delay between responses and reinfor-
cers, bar pressing was acquired and maintained with 3 of 4
rats. Further increases in the DRO value would be expected
to further decrease responding. Whether a sufficiently long
unsignaled delay would fail to result in the development of
responding is a question beyond the scope of the present
experiment. The remarkable and significant findings are that
naive animals learn to bar press in the absence of any re-
sponse-produced stimulus change when the consequence re-
liably occurs 30 s after the response that produced it and that
such responding persists over many sessions.
Experiment 6
In Experiments 4 and 5, the location of the operandum
adjacent to the food cup may have contributed to the devel-
opment of the bar press response. For example, by locating
itself adjacent to the food cup, the rat may have operated the
lever, at least on occasion, simply by bumping into it as it
hovered around the food cup. To examine this possibility, in
this experiment the operandum was changed to a vertical tube
(omnidirectional lever) located at the rear of the chamber.
Method
Subjects. Each of 3 experimentally naive female Sprague-Dawley
rats, 120 days old at the beginning of the experiment, was maintained
at 70% of its ad libitum body weight.
Apparatus. The apparatus was identical to that used in Experi-
ment 4 except that the bar adjacent to the food cup was removed and
an omnidirectional lever (Gerbrands Model G6313) was used to
define the response. The omnidirectional lever was a 10.5-cm long
tube, 7 mm in diameter, placed on the midline of the ceiling, 5 cm
from the rear wall of the chamber. Thus, it was located near the rear
of the chamber instead of adjacent to the food cup as the bar had
been.
Procedure. The procedure was identical to that used in Experi-
ment 5 except that the tandem FR 1 DRO 30-s schedule was in effect
for 10 sessions.
Results
Figure 7 shows that each rat began pressing the omnidirec-
tional lever by the second session and continued to press it in
each of the next nine sessions at rates of between about 0.5
and 10 responses per min. Daily visual observation of at least
one of the rats for the first 5 min of the session revealed that
each rat's lever press response was a discrete response that
involved the rat raising up on its hind legs, extending its front
paw to the lever, and thrusting the paw forward to activate
the lever switch. Biting the lever and accidentally bumping
into the lever to activate it were not observed.
Discussion
These results suggest that neither the type of operandum
nor its location is critical in response acquisition with delayed
reinforcement by rats. Because of the extended distance be-
 36 KENNON A. LATTAL AND SUZANNE GLEESON

7 37
to 10

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10 15 20 5 10 IS 20
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SUCCESSIVE SESSIONS
Figure 6. Responses per minute for each rat during each session of Experiment 5. (The dashed line
demarks 1 response per minute; where lines touch the x axis, the number of responses was 0.)

tween the lever and the food cup, the results also seem to
further exclude simple response elicitation or induction by
the reinforcer as a factor in the response acquisition (cf.
Experiment 3).
General Discussion
The results of these experiments suggest that responses need
not be shaped through the differential reinforcement of suc-
cessive approximations and that consequences need not be
immediate for such responses to occur and to be maintained.
The appearance of key pecking and bar pressing under the
delay contingencies across individuals, species, and a number
of environmental configurations attest to the robustness of
the effect. Such findings challenge conventional wisdom and
relate to more general issues of the origins of operant behavior
and the processes involved in response acquisition and main-
tenance.
Experiments examining delay of reinforcement effects on
behavior span the history of the laboratory study of learning.
In these many experiments, in one way or another, immediate
consequences of the response confounded the results as noted
in the introduction. Establishing behavior without shaping
was useful in the present experiments because the final form
of the behavior appeared full grown or not at all. Both this
technique and the use of an unsignaled delay procedure
eliminated many of the methodological ambiguities found in
earlier analyses of response acquisition with delayed reinforce-
ment.
Two responses may be singled out by detailed consideration
in the present analysis. These are the first response emitted
by the subject because, as Skinner (1969) noted, "the rat must
press the lever at least once 'for other reasons' before it presses
it 'for food'" (p. 175) and the second response because it, like
those that follow it, may be learned. Types of variables to be
considered, especially with respect to the first response, in-
clude organismic factors and environmental design. Processes
related to the second and subsequent responses then will be
discussed.
Examples of organismic factors that might influence the
first response include elicitation or induction of responding
by the reinforcer, species and individual differences in behav-
ior patterns, and food deprivation, A systematic role for
response elicitation or induction by the reinforcer in control-
ling the first response appears to be minimal, given that there
were intervals of several minutes to many hours between the
 RESPONSE ACQUISITION WITH DELAYED REINFORCEMENT
last food presentation of magazine training and the first
response. Presumably reinforcer-induced responding would
occur fairly soon after the reinforcer.
The development of responses with delayed reinforcement
in the absence of response shaping occurred in almost all rats
and pigeons studied. The pigeon's well-known propensity for
pecking may contribute to the first peck. In addition, turning
off the response keylight during food delivery in hopper
training may establish the keylight as a conditional stimulus
that elicits pecking. This possibiEty seems unlikely, however,
because of the intervals between the last hopper presentation
and the first key peck. Aspects of the rat's exploratory behavior
also may operate in favor of the occurrence of the first bar or
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omnidirectional lever press. One possibility is that olfactory
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stimuli, correlated with the lever as a result of previous rats
pressing it, might establish exploration that results in the
initial bar press that is reinforced after the delay period. Such
a systematic effect is contraindicated because 1 of the 3 rats
in the extinction condition and 2 of the 3 rats in the VT
condition failed to respond in the first six sessions. The other
rats in these conditions responded only minimally.
Within a species, there were large individual differences in
the time to the first response following magazine training
10
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10
SUCCESSIVE
Figure 7. Responses per minute for each rat during each session of Experiment 6. (The clashed line
demarks 1 resnonse ner minute: where lines touch the r axis, the number of resnonses was 01
37
despite similar body weights, magazine training, and environ-
mental arrangements. The source of such differences is strictly
a matter of speculation at this time.
In establishing food as a reinforcer by limiting access to it,
our interest was in arranging conditions that would optimize
the likelihood of behavioral development and control by the
delay of reinforcement procedures. Morse and Kelleher (1977)
observed that "if food deprived rats are maintained at 60-
65% of ad lib body weight rather than at 80%, characteristic
schedule-controlled performances are more easily obtained"
(p. 186). In the present experiments, maintaining 70% of free-
feeding weights insured a vigorous approach to the food source
and a strong level of activity, which seems important in
developing behavior under delayed reinforcement conditions.
Response acquisition with delayed reinforcement was a
robust effect that developed despite several variations in en-
vironmental design. Neither operandum type nor location
was critical in the appearance of the first response, but certain
features of the operandum may facilitate the first response.
The protrusion of a bar or omnidirectional lever into the
chamber may make it more likely that random exploration
will result in operandum contact. Similarly, pigeons may emit
the first response sooner after magazine training when a key
10
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SESSIONS
 38 KENNON A. LATTAL AND SUZANNE GLEESON
extension is present (but see the discussion of Experiment 1
for qualifications in interpreting these observations).
We illuminated the pigeon chamber with only the response
key, in keeping with Neuringer's (1970) procedure, but the
rat chamber was illuminated by a houselight In these exper-
iments, we used a red key light to take advantage of what is
reported to be the pigeon's preference for red stimuli. In a
pilot experiment, however, pigeons developed the response
under similar conditions to Experiment 1 when a yellow key
light was used. Comparison of these stimulus conditions was
beyond the scope of these experiments, but it would be
surprising if chamber illumination or key color was essential
to the results.
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Long sessions, relative to the typical 30-60 min session in
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studies of response maintenance, were common early in each
experiment. Session length was dictated by the animal's be-
havior, with the exception of the yoked animals in Experi-
ments 1 and 4. We generally left the animals in the chamber
for extended session durations until responding developed.
Once it did, shorter sessions were necessary to maintain
appropriate deprivation levels.
With respect to the second response, one possibility that
must be excluded if the behavior is to be considered learned
is that the behavior is elicited or induced by the reinforcement
schedule. As noted earlier, comparisons between the delay
and VT conditions in Experiments 1 and 4 illuminate this
issue. With rats, responding induced by the VT schedule was
inconsequential, but the pigeons in the VT condition pecked
the response key at least once during most sessions, albeit
infrequently. These results suggest that a few responses may
be described as induced or elicited by the reinforcer, but most
must be accounted for in other ways.
A primary consideration in the control of the second and
subsequent responses is the nature of the relation between
such responses and reinforcement. Unsignaled delay proce-
dures insure that a positive contingency, or correlation, exists
between responding and reinforcement in the absence of a
requirement of response-reinforcer temporal contiguity (Glee-
son & Lattal, 1987; Sizemore & Lattal, 1977). The present
results, especially those of Experiments 2-6, may be inter-
preted to support responding when only a correlation is
present, in the absence of any history of contiguity. That is,
contingency alone appears to develop and to maintain re-
sponding.
A role for contiguity, however, might be supported by the
present data in at least three ways. First, the response rates
were consistent with those found in other experiments when
response-reinforcer temporal contiguity is disrupted. Re-
sponse rates under the delay procedure were low and, in
comparing the results of Experiments 4 and 5, response rates
seem to be lower when longer unsignaled delays were in effect.
The operation of contiguity within a contingency in this
manner was described by Baum (1973).
A second role for response-reinforcer contiguity is suggested
by the work of Lieberman and colleagues on the marking of
responses under conditions of delayed reinforcement (e.g.,
Lieberman, Davidson, & Thomas, 1985; Lieberman, Mc-
Intosh, & Thomas, 1979). Delays signaled by an immediate
stimulus change following the response that initiates the delay
maintain considerably more responding than do equivalent
unsignaled delays (e.g., Richards, 1981). In some instances,
such signaled delays maintain responding not appreciably
different from that maintained by immediate reinforcement
(e.g., Ferster, 1953; Richards, 1981). Lieberman and his col-
leagues studied a procedure in which the response of pigeons
or rats that initiated an otherwise unsignaled delay interval
produced a brief light or noise stimulus. These stimuli were
described as markers, and responding was more likely when
the markers accompanied the initiation of a delay interval
than if they did not. The purpose of the unsignaled delays in
the present experiment was to eliminate the immediate stim-
ulus change that historically has confounded the interpreta-
tion of delay of reinforcement by immediate secondary or
conditioned reinforcement. There is, however, always an im-
mediate proprioceptive consequence of a response. When
responding is relatively infrequent, as during the early sessions
of each of the experiments reported here, it is possible that
this proprioceptive stimulus serves as a signal or marker as
described by Lieberman and colleagues. As a result, respond-
ing could develop because of its immediate production of a
marker that reliably precedes reinforcement, rather than to
an overall correlation or contingency between responding and
reinforcement. As responding becomes more frequent as
training proceeds, it is likely that the distinctness of the
response as a marker is lost or at least diluted so that other
processes operate to maintain the behavior.
Third, we have noted previously that, early in training,
sessions were long relative to most experimental studies of
delay of reinforcement. Rather than correlation being the
mechanism whereby responding is developed and maintained,
one alternative is what might be described as relative conti-
guity. Because the animal is in the chamber for an extended
period, a delay of 10 s may not function as an equivalent
delay duration functions in the context of a shorter session.
When the first peck occurs after a period of nothing happening
in the box, a 10-s delay to food presentation is brief relative
to the amount of time in which food was not presented. There
is considerable evidence that reinforcement effects depend on
their context (e.g., DeVilliers, 1977; Herrnstein, 1970; Hursh,
1980; Timberlake & Peden, 1987). It seems plausible to
extrapolate these notions of the relativity of reinforcement
effects and to suggest that the effects of contiguity may depend
on its temporal context. Even though the response and rein-
forcer are separated from one another by an absolute time
interval of 10-30 s, in relative terms, this interval may be
quite immediate.
Segal (1972), Skinner (1969), and others have discussed the
origins of behavior constrained by the organism's physiology
in environmental context. Some observers have considered
certain responses as "preorganized" or otherwise highly likely
as a result of organismic structure. The present results may
seem consistent with such an analysis; however, nothing was
analyzed of the behavior leading to the first response. How,
or whether, the final behavior is differentiated over time, as
it is with response shaping, is not known. Both response
shaping and the present procedures illustrate how contingen-
cies of reinforcement, imposed on undifferentiated behavior,
result in its organization into what ultimately appears to be
 RESPONSE ACQUISITION WITH DELAYED REINFORCEMENT
discrete units of behavior. Arbuckle and Lattal (1988) illus-
trated how brief unsignaled delays of reinforcement, intro-
duced following training with immediate reinforcement, con-
trol the microstructure of behavior by differentially reinforc-
ing brief interresponse times. The present results illustrate
how long unsignaled delays can control the macrostructure
of behavior by reinforcing discrete, fully differentiated simple
responses of pigeons and rats.
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Received January 11, 1989
Revision received August 3, 1989
Accepted August 4, 1989 •