The effect of redundant contextual stimuli on autoshaping the pigeon’s keypeck

Three experiments investigated the effect of contextual and trial stimulus lighting conditions on keypeck autoshaping in pigeons. White illumination of a response key before food presentation readily produced keypecking in a brightly lit chamber but failed to do so in a chamber without house illumination (Experiments I and III). Keypecking in a darkened cubicle progressively increased and the facilitatory effect of a houselight decreased as the keylight stimulus was varied from a color change (Experiment II) to a feature change (Experiment III). These findings support a “cue localization” hypothesis of autoshaping. according to which reinforcement signals select specific behaviors for expression and direct these behaviors toward the source of stimulation. This account was extended to superstitious and operant conditioning situations.