Psychology Commons^™

Distractors As A Tool To Increase “Self-Control” In Pigeons (Columba Livia), Peyton Mueller

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

In the successive delay-discounting task, all trials start with a stimulus to which a response results in a small amount of reinforcement (smaller-sooner). If no response is made, the stimulus changes and a response results in a larger reinforcer (larger-later). The purpose of this study was to examine the use of a non-reinforced distractor (a stimulus to which responding has no programmed consequence) as a method of increasing the proportion of larger-later (LL) choices in a successive delay-discounting task. Earlier research studying the use of distractors may have inadvertently associated the distractor with reinforcement. Four experiments were conducted and each …