Response acquisition by humans with delayed reinforcement.

The present experiment examined whether a response class was acquired by humans with delayed reinforcement. Eight white circles were presented on a computer touch screen. If the undergraduates touched two of the eight circles in a specified sequence (i.e., touching first the upper-left circle then the bottom-left circle), then the touches initiated an unsignaled resetting delay culminating in point delivery. Participants experienced one of three different delays (0 s, 10 s, or 30 s). Rates of the target two-response sequence were higher with delayed reinforcement than with no reinforcement. Terminal rates of the target sequence decreased and postreinforcement pauses increased as a function of delay duration. Other undergraduates exposed to yoked schedules of response-independent point deliveries failed to acquire the sequence. The results demonstrate that a response class was acquired with delayed reinforcement, extending the generality of this phenomenon found with nonhuman animals to humans.