Extinction in the Pigeon after Continuous Reinforcement: Effect of Number of Reinforced Responses

Abstract

Number of responses and time to extinction were measured after 3, 10, 1000, 3000, 5000, and 10,000 reinforced key-peck responses during conditioning. Each response was reinforced with a 045-gm. food pellet. The number of responses in extinction was a monotonically increasing function which became asymptotic beyond 1000 reinforced responses. Number of reinforced responses during conditioning significantly affected the number of responses in extinction ( p < .001) but not the time to extinction. The results support the findings of previous free-operant bar-press studies with rats. Free-operant animal studies of extinction after continuous reinforcement have consistently produced monotonically increasing functions and have typically employed relatively small amounts of reinforcement. Amount of reward may be an important parameter determining the shape of the extinction function in the free-operant studies.