Observing responses: maintained by good news only?

Observing responses are those that produce stimuli correlated with the availability (S+) or non-availability (S-) of reinforcement but that has no influence on the actual delivery or timing of reinforcement. Prior research has shown that observing is maintained by the occasional production of the S+ ("good news") and not by production of the equally informative S- ("bad news"). However, for both humans and rats the S- maintains observing when it is at least implicitly correlated with good news. In the present study, pigeons could obtain both good and bad news by responding during the appropriate key color. In one condition, the bad news was actually more informative about reinforcement than was the good news. Nevertheless, a preponderance of the birds' responses was made on the nominally good-news option. The present results offer further support for the central role of good news in maintaining observing responses and are entirely consistent with the traditional conditioned-reinforcement (or classical conditioning) interpretation of observing. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.