title: Reinforcement signals facilitate learning about early behaviors of a response sequence.
abstract: The present experiment examined the effect of presenting a stimulus simultaneously with the delivery of reinforcement on the acquisition of a two-response sequence. Two groups of rats responded on a schedule that required the subject to emit either a left-lever right-lever or a right-lever left-lever response sequence to obtain reinforcement. A group with a 500-ms auditory reinforcement-signal emitted the sequence at a higher rate than a groups of rats that lacked the signal. The rates of response on the terminal response lever were similar in both signalled and unsignalled groups, but rates were higher on the initial response lever in the signalled compared to the unsignalled condition. These results suggest that a signal for reinforcement acts to enhance learning about the preceding response sequence, and that this facilitation is due to an enhancement in emitting the initial rather than the terminal component of the sequence.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Missouri at Columbia, Columbia, Missouri, USA.
authors.forename: T R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Schachtman
authors.affiliation: University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Reed