Williams, D. R., & Williams, H. (1969).
Automaintenance in the pigeon: Sustained pecking despite contingent nonreinforcement.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
12, 511-520.
If a response key is regularly illuminated for several seconds
before food is presented, pigeons will peck it after a moderate
number of pairings; this "auto-shaping" procedure of
Brown and Jenkins (1968) was explored further in the
present series of four experiments. The first showed that pecking
was maintained even when pecks turned off the key and prevented
reinforcement (auto-maintenance); the second controlled for
possible effects of generalization and stimulus change. Two other
experiments explored procedures that manipulated the tendency to
peck the negatively correlated key by introducing alternative
response keys which had no scheduled consequences. The results
indicate that pecking can be established and maintained by
certain stimulus-reinforcer relationships, independent of
explicit or adventitious contingencies between response and
reinforcer. [Brown, P.L. and Jenkins, H.M. Autoshaping of the
pigeon's key-peck. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of
Behavior, 1968, 11, 1-8.