Color preference shift in hungry and thirsty pigeons

Abstract

A number of studies have revealed that animals often show marked spontaneous color preferences when responding behaviorally to chromatic stimuli (lise, 1941;Tinbergen & Perdeck, 1950;Curtius, 1954;Hess, 1956;Muntz, 1962; Kear, 1964;Quine & Cullen, 1964; Hailman, 1967). The preference patterns in most cases cannot be related in any simple way to the spectral sensitivity of the receptors (Thompson, in press) and in a given species they appear to vary with the type of behavior the animal responds to the colored stimuli. The response and the color preference shown in such cases depends on the motivational state the animal is in when facing the stimuli (Impekoven, in press) and on the stimulus context in which coler is presented (G. Thompson, unpublished). The experiment reported here was aimed at establishing motivation-dependent color preferences in the pigeon, an animal which lends itself to further experimental manipulation including electrophysiological recording. Hunger and thirst were used as suitably controllable motivational variables. 2 APPARATUS The apparatus used was a brightly lit, octagonal Skinner box with eight transparent pigeon pecking keys, one on each wall. Exchangeable stimulus cards could be slid into these keys. Rewards were offered at the center of the box floor and were either grains delivered with a hopper for 4 sec, or water injected into a well by a pump and available for 4 sec. The box was programmed using conventional relay equipment so that pecks to each key were counted separately on eight counters, but a peck to any of the keys produced a reward. While the reward was being offered, however, no further pecks were counted, this ensuring that if the pigeons gave a burst of pecks, as they sometimes did, to a key before going to the center of the box for the reward, only the first response registered so that each response recorded was an independent key choice. Another counter shut down the trial after a preset total of 50 choices had been reached. METHODS Three pigeons (Columba IMa, var. domestica) of mixed breeds and from various sources, were used in the experiment. After having been gradually deprived to 80 per cent of their normal weight they were pretrained for 10 to 15 trials with neutral grey stimulus cards, by which tinle they pecked indiscriminately any of the keys for grain hopper access. The key cards were then replaced by a set of eight color cards: purple, red, yellow. orange, yellow-green, green, green-blue, and blue, and after four pretrials in which the animals settled down to responding in this situation they were run fo~ two blocks of eight trials each. Within each block the colored cards were randomly allocated one by one to each and all keys, the animals being maintained at 80 per cent body weight throughout the experiment. After eight days recovery in which they regained their full weight, they were deprived of water for 18 h before each trial, while having ad lib food, and after four pretrials run for two blocks of trials replicating the

Autoshaped Responding: A Baseline for Studying Stimulus Preference

“…For 25 and their origins may be ontogenic or phylogenic (e.g., Hess, 1956;Jones, 1954). The relevant literature extends from casual observations of the behavior of adult birds (e.g., Austin, 1974;Blieden, 1974;Brancato, 1974) to experiments that control visual stimulation from the time of hatching (e.g., Kovach, 1971;Mayer &c Hailman, 1976), with color stimuli ranging from painted surfaces or stimulus cards to projected monochromatic sources (e.g., Delius, 1968;Sahgal & Iversen, 1975;Salzen, Lily, & McKeown, 1971;Tracy, 1970). The present experiments illustrate the application of an autoshaping procedure to the study of such preferences.…”

RESPONSE PREFERENCES OF MONKEYS (MACACA MULATTA) WITHIN WAVELENGTH AND LINE‐TILT DIMENSIONS

“…For example, many studies use light of different colors to signal the presence of a particular schedule, witlh the rate of responding to the different colors being used as an index of the animal's preference for one ' Delius (1968) and Sahgal and Iversen (1975) have slhown the existence of marked color preferences in the pigeon. Color preferences have also been found in ducklings (Tracy, 1970), and Humphrey (1971) found that monkeys tend to flood their test chambers witlh blue rather than red light.…”

Brightness Dependence of Colour Preferences in Herring Gull Chicks

“…In view of the contradictory results that have been obtained with blue in the begging situation, some authors finding that it was as good a releaser as red, others finding blue to be mediocre, perhaps because of usiiig blues of various intensities (HAILMAN 1969), it seeins likely that its effectiveness is intensity dependent. Elsewhere one of us has in fact suggested that changes in the light-dark adaptation state of the retina, i. e. in the ratio of cone to rod activity, plays a role in determining the response to blue (DELIUS 1968). The red system on the other hand cannot of course be affected by the rods because they are not sensitive to this wavelength.…”

“…Since the classic study by TINBERGEN and PERDECK (1950) of the colour preferences of gull chicks reacting with the begging response to models of the parental beak, much has been published on spontaneous behavioural colour preferences of birds (e. g. CURTIUS 1954;HESS 1956;TINBEKGEN et al 1962;KEAR 1964;QUINE and CULLEN 1964;HAILMAN 1967;OPPENHEIM 1968;DELIUS 1968). Several aspects of this phenomenon are of special interest, including the nature of the filtering mechanism (MARLEK 1961) that causes the behavioural response to the colour snectrum to be different from the physiological spectral sensitivity recorded at the level of the sensory organs (THOMPSON, in press) and the question of the adaptive value of the preferences in the animal's normal environment (HAILMAN 1968).…”