Fine response discrimination in pigeons

Abstract

The results of two experiments on fine response discrimination in pigeons are presented. In both experiments pigeons were exposed to a Fixed Consecutive Number (FCN) schedule which required to peck a key for a fixed number of times and then visit the food hooper. Experiment 1 used two schedules (FCN 4 and FCN 8) and assessed the effects of their presentation order. The results showed that pigeons that were first trained on a FCN 4 schedule and then switched to a FCN 8 showed a better performance than pigeons exposed to the reversed sequence of conditions. The purpose of Experiment 2 was to test, using a FCN schedule with fixed upper and lower response requirements, a shaping procedure which consisted in gradually reducing the upper and the lower limits to the exact number of responses; pigeons were changed to a higher or lower FCN schedule. Results showed that response discrimination was better in the subjects that werw changed to a high FCN schedule. These data support the thesis that pigeons discriminate in a differential way among adjacent quantities of elements.