Pigeons group time intervals according to their relative duration

Zentall, Thomas R.; Weaver, Janice E.; Clement, Tricia S.

doi:10.3758/bf03206469

Cited by 27 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(6 reference statements)

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“…Thus, our findings indicate that categorical scaling of duration and the rapid formation of category boundaries at the geometric mean of the category prototypes are not restricted to humans and may be found in a variety of other vertebrate species. Although perhaps not entirely unexpected (Fetterman & Killeen, 1995;Wearden, 1995;Zentall, Weaver, & Clement, 2004), this phenomenon has not been previously reported. Moreover, its occurrence in pigeons, mice, and humans indicates that it is a very general-perhaps universal-property of temporal cognition (see Balci & Gallistel, 2006;Cordes, Williams, & Meck, 2007;Droit-Volet et al, 2007;Lustig & Meck, 2000;Malapani & Fairhurst, 2002).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 51%

Categorical Scaling of Duration Bisection in Pigeons (Columba livia), Mice (Mus musculus), and Humans (Homo sapiens)

2008

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A fundamental assumption underlying research in translational neuroscience is that animal models represent many of the same neurocognitive mechanisms and decision processes used by humans. Clear demonstrations of such correspondences will be crucial to the discovery of the neurobiological underpinnings of higher-level cognition. One domain likely to support fruitful comparisons is interval timing, because humans and other animals appear to share basic similarities in their ability to discriminate the durations of events in the seconds-to-minutes range. Here, we report that in a duration-bisection procedure using a series of anchor durations ranging from 2 through 5 s, pigeon, mouse, and human subjects classified a given signal duration as subjectively shorter than an adjacent, physically shorter signal duration when the two durations lay on opposite sides of a putative category boundary. These bisection reversals provide strong evidence for continuity of temporal cognition across a wide range of vertebrate species.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 51%

Categorical Scaling of Duration Bisection in Pigeons (Columba livia), Mice (Mus musculus), and Humans (Homo sapiens)

2008

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“…However, a few studies have found a PSE that was slightly greater than the geometric mean (e.g., Zentall, Weaver, & Clement, 2004), predicting a bias for B in the present case (i.e., the comparison associated with the 4-s sample). In fact, if the PSE were greater than 8 s (e.g., PSE 0 10 s), at least for some pigeons, we would predict that these pigeons would prefer B over Y following test samples shorter than 10 s, and Y over B following test samples longer than 10 s. Because the samples were approximately 8 s long in Phase III of Experiment 2, the pigeons should have shown a bias for B similar to the one shown by subjects P876 and P366 during the first test session (see Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Emergent relations in pigeons following training with temporal samples

et al. 2012

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In two experiments, we investigated emergent conditional relations in pigeons using a symbolic matching-tosample task with temporal stimuli as the samples and hues as the comparisons. Both experiments comprised three phases. In Phase I, pigeons learned to choose a red keylight (R) but not a green keylight (G) after a 1-s signal. They also learned to choose G but not R after a 4-s signal. In Phase II, correct responding consisted of choosing a blue keylight (B) after a 4-s signal and a yellow keylight (Y) after a 16-s signal. Comparisons G and B were both related to the same 4-s sample, whereas comparisons R and Y had no common sample. In Phase III, R and G were presented as samples, and B and Y were presented as the comparisons. The choice of B was correct following G, and the choice of Y was correct following R. If a relation between comparisons that shared a common sample were to emerge, then responding to B given G would be more likely than responding to Y given R. The results were generally consistent with this prediction, suggesting, for the first time in pigeons, the emergence of novel relations that involve temporal stimuli as nodal samples.

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“…Two studies have claimed evidence for relational control in bisection tasks. Zentall, Weaver and Clement (2004) exposed pigeons to the following mappings ‘2s→Red, 8s→Green’ (first bisection task with red and green keylights as comparisons) and 4s→Vertical, 16s→Horizontal’ (second bisection task with a vertical or a horizontal white bar projected on a dark key as comparisons). Critically, in the first task, the long duration of 8 s equaled the geometric mean of the durations used in the second task (i.e., 8 =√[4×16]) and, conversely, in the second task, the short duration of 4 s equaled the geometric mean of the durations used in the first task (4=√[2×8]).…”

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confidence: 99%

Relative Versus Absolute Stimulus Control in the Temporal Bisection Task

Carvalho

Machado

2012

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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When subjects learn to associate two sample durations with two comparison keys, do they learn to associate the keys with the short and long samples (relational hypothesis), or with the specific sample durations (absolute hypothesis)? We exposed 16 pigeons to an ABA design in which phases A and B corresponded to tasks using samples of 1 s and 4 s, or 4 s and 16 s. Across phases, we varied the mapping between the samples and the keys. For group Relative, short and long samples were always associated with the same keys (e.g., Phase A: '1s→ Left, 4s→ Right'; Phase B: '4s→ Left, 16s→ Right'); for group Absolute, the 4-s sample was associated always with the same key (e.g., Phase A: '1s→ Left, 4s→ Right'; Phase B: '16s→ Left, 4s→ Right'). If temporal control is relational, group Relative should learn the new task faster than group Absolute, but if temporal control is absolute, the opposite should occur. We compared the results with the predictions of the Learning-to-Time (LeT) model, which accounts for temporal discrimination in terms of absolute stimulus control and stimulus generalization. The acquisition curves of the two groups were generally consistent with LeT and therefore more consistent with the absolute than the relative hypothesis.

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Pigeons group time intervals according to their relative duration

Cited by 27 publications

References 8 publications

Categorical Scaling of Duration Bisection in Pigeons (Columba livia), Mice (Mus musculus), and Humans (Homo sapiens)

Categorical Scaling of Duration Bisection in Pigeons (Columba livia), Mice (Mus musculus), and Humans (Homo sapiens)

Emergent relations in pigeons following training with temporal samples

Relative Versus Absolute Stimulus Control in the Temporal Bisection Task

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