Anticipating by Pigeons Depends on Local Statistical Information in a Serial Response Time Task.

Froehlich, Alyson; Herbranson, Walter T.; Loper, Joyce E.; Wood, D. M.; Shimp, Charles P.

doi:10.1037/0096-3445.133.1.31

Cited by 24 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The researchers concluded that "recognition of patterns is an [automatic] obligatory, dynamic process that includes the extraction of local structure from even random sequences" (p. 489). Similar sensitivity to local statistical structure has been found in pigeons on a variant of the SRT task (Froehlich, Herbranson, Loper, Wood, & Shimp, 2004). In this study, the pigeons were faster to respond when the location of the stimulus could be predicted from the locations of the previous one or two stimuli, indicating that anticipations of forthcoming stimuli based on local patterns does not necessarily reflect high-level cognitive strategies.…”

Section: What Do Anticipatory Eye Movements Reflect?supporting

confidence: 49%

Oculomotor evidence of sequence learning on the serial reaction time task

2006

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Manual and oculomotor measures of sequence learning were examined on the serial reaction time (SRT) task. Participants were assigned into four groups differing on response modality (manual, oculomotor) and trial type (sequence, pseudorandom). The pattern of manual RTs replicated previous studies. Frequency of anticipatory eye movements followed similar patterns as RTs. Participants made many anticipations, even in pseudorandom blocks, and frequency of anticipations did not depend on presence of concurrent manual responses. Excluding participants with explicit awareness did not change results. Anticipations were negatively related to RTs in both incidental and intentional learning. Anticipations were positively related to sequence recall in intentional, but not incidental, learning. Results suggest that (1) anticipatory eye movements reflected sequence learning and (2) participants made overt and covert shifts of visuospatial attention to likely stimulus locations prior to stimulus onset, whether or not they made manual responses and whether or not there was a sequence.

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Section: What Do Anticipatory Eye Movements Reflect?supporting

confidence: 49%

Oculomotor evidence of sequence learning on the serial reaction time task

2006

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“…For example, pigeons were shown to be able to anticipate the location of an upcoming target based either on the statistics of target presentation (7) or on the validity of a spatial cue (8). However, these studies measured the effects of cueing only in terms of faster reaction times to the cued location, and faster reaction times can result simply from planning a motor response to a target's location based on the advance information provided by the cue.…”

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confidence: 99%

Visuospatial selective attention in chickens

Sridharan

Ramamurthy

Schwarz

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Voluntary control of attention promotes intelligent, adaptive behaviors by enabling the selective processing of information that is most relevant for making decisions. Despite extensive research on attention in primates, the capacity for selective attention in nonprimate species has never been quantified. Here we demonstrate selective attention in chickens by applying protocols that have been used to characterize visual spatial attention in primates. Chickens were trained to localize and report the vertical position of a target in the presence of task-relevant distracters. A spatial cue, the location of which varied across individual trials, indicated the horizontal, but not vertical, position of the upcoming target. Spatial cueing improved localization performance: accuracy (d′) increased and reaction times decreased in a space-specific manner. Distracters severely impaired perceptual performance, and this impairment was greatly reduced by spatial cueing. Signal detection analysis with an "indecision" model demonstrated that spatial cueing significantly increased choice certainty in localizing targets. By contrast, error-aversion certainty (certainty of not making an error) remained essentially constant across cueing protocols, target contrasts, and individuals. The results show that chickens shift spatial attention rapidly and dynamically, following principles of stimulus selection that closely parallel those documented in primates. The findings suggest that the mechanisms that control attention have been conserved through evolution, and establish chickens-a highly visual species that is easily trained and amenable to cutting-edge experimental technologiesas an attractive model for linking behavior to neural mechanisms of selective attention.T he capacity to select particular locations or stimuli for differential analysis and decision making is essential for any animal to behave intelligently in a complex environment. It follows that neural mechanisms that enable this capacity must have appeared early in evolution (1). In humans, and nonhuman primates, selective attention enables such adaptive behavior by selecting from all possible information the information that is most relevant for making decisions (2, 3). However, little is known about whether the capacity for selective attention exists in nonprimate vertebrate species.Studies that were intended to measure selective attention in nonprimate species have produced inconclusive results for several reasons. First, much of the previous work has inferred the capacity for selective attention based on selective learning or selective reporting of specific cue features, both in birds (4) and in rodents (5). For example, in highly cited work on feature-based attention (4), pigeons were reinforced for pecking on targets that contained combinations of two features (e.g., color and shape). In later trials, when the features were presented individually, they pecked almost exclusively on targets with only one of the two features (e.g., color, ignoring shape). The results ...

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“…Procedure. The basic procedure was similar to that of Froehlich et al (2004). There were 750 discrete trials per daily session.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All birds ran first in Condition 1 and then in Condition 2. The overall reinforcement probability per key peck was maintained at approximately the same value, .05, as in Froehlich et al (2004). Experimental conditions were run for 20 days.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A molecular position takes this local tracking into account, and a molar one intentionally does not (see Marr, 2004, and corresponding discussion). The results from Experiment 2 and from Froehlich et al (2004) therefore constrain the generality of a molar analysis, including special cases, such as the matching law, and increase the generality of a molecular analysis.…”

Section: Processing Of Statistical Information and Molecular And Molamentioning

confidence: 98%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Information processing by pigeons (Columba livia): Incentive as information.

Shimp

Froehlich²,

Herbranson³

2007

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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Experiment 1 showed that the Hick-Hyman law (W. E. Hick, 1952;R. Hyman, 1953) described the effects of anticipated reinforcement, a form of incentive, on pigeons' (Columba livia) reaction time to respond to a target spatial location. Reaction time was an approximately linear function of amount of information interpreted as probability of reinforcement, implying that pigeons processed incentive at a constant rate. Experiment 2 showed that the Hick-Hyman law described effects of incentive even when it varied from moment to moment in a serial reaction time task similar to that of M. J. Nissen and P. Bullemer (1987), and processing information about target spatial location modulated absolute reaction time and not rate of processing incentive. The results support mental continuity and provide comparative support for the idea of the economics of information in economic theory about the incentive value of information.

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Anticipating by Pigeons Depends on Local Statistical Information in a Serial Response Time Task.

Cited by 24 publications

References 41 publications

Oculomotor evidence of sequence learning on the serial reaction time task

Oculomotor evidence of sequence learning on the serial reaction time task

Visuospatial selective attention in chickens

Information processing by pigeons (Columba livia): Incentive as information.

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