Maintenance and Transfer of Self-reinforcement Functions*

In order to examine conditions maintaining self-reinforcement functions, pigeons were trained to reward their own performances and then tested for adherence to work requirements under decreasing likelihood of punishment for undeserved self-reward. Contingent self-reinforcement was stably maintained given moderate to high probability that unmerited self-reward would incur punishing consequences. In successive reversals of treatment and test conditions, the amount of behavior performed for each self-reward covaried with self-reinforcement rate. A further experiment demonstrated that self-reinforcing practices, involving both performance and consummatory contingencies, transfer to new activities for which the animal had never been trained to reward himself contingently. Adherence to performance requirements was more stringent, however, than to limitations on amount of reinforcers consumed from freely available provisions.