Discrimination and Attention in Dogs

Abstract

Sumntary.-TWO dogs were trained to perform a left-right discrimination task in which depressing a treadle presented a compound visual and auditory stimulus in random ordcr appropriate to one or the other of two distant reinforcement stations. Depression of the appropriate discrimination treadle was reinforced by water presentation. A modified correction procedure was used in training. Following acquisition, probe test trials consisting of the visual stimulus component alone, the auditory stimulus component alone, and reversed or cues-opposed compound stimulus were presented. Test trials demonstrated the visual component of the compound stimulus to have acquired discriminative control, but the cues-opposed test trials also demonstrated a low but extant degree of discriminative control exerted by the auditory stimulus component. As the compound stimulus employed here consisted of visual components differing only in location and auditory components differing only in pitch, implications for future research manipulating further these qualitative and quantitative variables were discussed.One interpretation of discrimination learning (Spence, 1936;Hull, 1952) holds that when a response is made and followed by a satisfying state of affairs, all stimuli striking receptors at the time will become associated with that response. Subsequent investigation~ have demonstrated that the degree to which stimuli concurrent with the reinforced response become associated with that response varies as a function of a number of variables. A more specific description of this variability, referred t o as "selective attention," is that on those conditional discrimination tasks employing compound stimuli, one dimension of the stimulus complex typically acquires more control over responding than another correlated dimension. Attempts to explain selective attention data have attributed the effect t o differences in relative saliency of particular types of stimuli (Krechevsky, 1932; Mackintosh, 1 9 6 5 ) , to quantitative relationships between discriminatively different stimuli correlated with different responses (Spence, 1 9 3 6 ) , and to a biological preparedness factor influencing ease of acquisition of certain selected stimulus topography-response relationships (Seligman, 1970).

The effectiveness of visual and auditory elements of a compound stimulus in controlling behavior in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris)

“…Numerically more dogs displayed preferential responding to the voice signals than to the hand gestures suggesting that the auditory element of the compound stimulus was more salient than the visual element. This finding contrasts with those of Haney and Crowder (1977) who found that a visual stimulus (a light) exerted greater stimulus control than an auditory stimulus (a tone) for dogs in a modified operant chamber. The different findings in the current study may be due to the different presentation of stimuli in isolation, compared to via a human.…”

“…One study investigated the response of dogs to a compound stimulus composed of a light and a tone (Haney and Crowder, 1977). They reported that the visual element overshadowed the auditory element, and came to control the behavior of the dogs more effectively.…”