Spontaneous alternation in chicks using social reward

Abstract

Two experiments examining spontaneous alternation in young white Leghorn chicks are reported. In Experiment I chicks (20 per group) run in a T-maze for 4 trials to social reward displayed alternation of responses, whereas nonrewarded chicks did not alternate. In Experiment II socially rewarded chicks (20 per group) again showed reliable alternation of responses whereas food, water, and nonrewarded chicks did not alternate. These data support the premise that spontaneous alternation behavior has some phyletic generality under optimum conditions, although the mechanisms which control it may differ across species.

Spontaneous alternation behavior in Paramecium

“…Some examples include paramecia (Lachman & Havlena, 1962;Lepley & Rice, 1952), planarians (Aderman & Dawson, 1970;Rice & Lawless, 1957;Shinkman & Hertzler, 1964), and chickens (Cogan, Jones, & Irons, 1979;Hayes & Warren, 1963;Hughes, 1989a). To date, little attention has been paid to this curious situation, whose interpretation is further complicated by the extreme diversity of experimental designs used to study alternation behaviors.…”

T-Maze Performance after Developmental Exposure to 19F Tagged 5-HTP in Chicks

“…The task involves a brief period of social isolation prior to the chick successfully transversing the maze to return to the brood. Chicks find rejoining the brood inherently reinforcing (Cogan, Jones, & Irons, 1979). If isolated from the brood for a prolonged period of time, distress calling in chicks extinguishes (Lehr, 1989;Sufka & Hughes, 1991;Feltenstein, Ford, Freeman, & Sufka, 2002).…”