I think that’s the same idea behind clicker training for dogs. There’s a delay in giving them the actual treat, but the instantaneous click sound lets them now they did the thing that results in a treat
not pavlov conditioning -- in Skinner's three term contingency, the stimulus context acquires meaning/significance related to the consequences of a response. a neutral or even negative stimulus (context) can become it's own reward through this process. this conditioned stimulus explains most animal and human experience. Humans are especially prone to constructing meaning based on the primal.
Think of the senses: sound becomes talking, music, etc. food become cuisine, obesity, and anorexia. eyes becomes art, movies, etc. desire becomes porn, s@m, etc.
meaning is constructed, socially constructed, or what skinner call "learning." His masterwork, long forgotten, is the "generic nature of stimulus and response." Generic as it open to near total manipulation
Similar to the rat knowing the sugar comes very shortly after the task.