Three autoshaping experiments explored the extinction of various keylight stimuli conditioned with partial and continuous reinforcement within the same pigeon subjects. Extinction of autoshaped keypecking proceeded more slowly in a stimulus trained with 50% (Experiment 1) and 25% (Experiment 2) reinforcement compared with a stimulus given 100% reinforcement. Experiment 3 found conditioning with 75% reinforcement to generate more rapid extinction than that with 25% reinforcement. These results have both theoretical and methodological implications for the study of extinction.
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