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Pigeons discriminate durations of food access better than durations of light

University of British Columbia

In the present experiments stimulus control of pigeons' keypecking by the duration of food access was compared with control by the duration of light. These experiments were designed to extend previous research on three topics within the stimulus control literature: 1) stimulus control by food, 2) comparisons between the effectiveness of different stimuli in controlling behavior, and 3) control by stimulus duration. In Experiment 1, a go/no-go procedure was used to compare control of pigeons' keypecking by food-access duration with control by light duration. Pecks to an illuminated key were reinforced with grain following 10-sec presentations of food access or houselight, but not after 5-sec presentations of either stimulus. Each of the five subjects discriminated food-access duration faster and to a consistently greater degree than light duration. In four between-subject systematic replications, pigeons discriminated food-access duration better than the duration of a localized light, the feeder light, and a keylight, and with either water or food as reinforcement. Experiment 2 demonstrated the generality of these results across discrimination procedures. In this experiment, control by food-access duration was compared with control by light duration under a conditional right-left choice procedure (two pigeons), and a delayed symbolic matching-to-sample procedure (six pigeons). Under both, accuracy was greater on food-access trials than on light trials. In Experiment 3, two pigeons received generalization tests with durations of food access and light that were intermediate to the training values. The results showed that responding was controlled by the duration dimension for both stimuli. The excellent control by food access in these experiments is consistent with previous evidence that food is an effective and memorable stimulus for animals, and the difference in control by the duration of food and light provides empirical support for the common assumption that stimuli differ in their effectiveness of control. Several advantages of using a duration paradigm to compare control by different stimuli are discussed. This research, which demonstrates that the stimulus can play an important role in the accuracy of duration discriminations, also has implications for the study of control by stimulus duration, and for theories of timing processes in animals.

Text

2010-03-09

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/21674

Psychology

University of British Columbia

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