Abstract: The literature of specific hungers and bait shyness contains much indirect evidence of learning involving prolonged delay of reinforcement. Specific hunger refers to the selective feeding by animals as they learn to correct a specific dietary deficiency, such as thiamine deficiency, while bait shyness describes the rejection of poisoned baits by animals, which have survived a previous poisoning attempt. It seems unlikely that learning can take place at all with delays of more than a few seconds. Instances of learning with protracted delays of reinforcement are always cases where immediate secondary reinforcement occurs. It is generalized that delayed reinforcement is not effective except under elaborate training conditions. However, when the response is ingestion and the rewards or punishments are changes in the physiological state of the organism, this generalization appears to be incorrect. Most specific hungers can be explained in terms of learned associations involving delayed aftereffects; an exception is the specific hunger for sodium, which appears to be largely innate. If rats are subjected to sodium deficiency and recover from it by drinking salt water, they tend to drink an abnormally large amount of salt water after the deficiency is relieved.
Publication Year: 1970
Publication Date: 1970-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 462
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