CHOICE FOR CONDITIONED REINFORCERS IN THE SIGNALED ABSENCE OF PRIMARY REINFORCEMENT

Pigeons responded in a multiple schedule in which concurrent schedules of brief‐stimulus presentation alternated with a component in which food was available (concurrent‐chains component). In the initial links of the concurrent‐chains component subjects chose either of two stimuli each correlated with the terminal link of one chain. The terminal links involved either variable‐interval 30‐second or variable‐interval 60‐second schedules. In the brief‐stimulus component subjects chose between 0.5‐second presentations of the terminal‐link stimuli from the concurrent‐chains component. Responding was generally maintained in the brief‐stimulus component in two subjects for more than 300 sessions, suggesting that brief stimuli were conditioned reinforcers. During the brief‐stimulus component, in 17 of 21 cases for which a minimal number of responses occurred, choice proportions above 0.55 were obtained for the brief‐stimulus presentations correlated with the higher rate of primary reinforcement in the concurrent‐chains component. These results support the suggestion that choice in conventional concurrent‐chains procedures is partially controlled by production of the terminal‐link stimuli. 1984 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior