The Roles of Experience in the Development of Behavior and the Nervous System

Gottlieb, Gilbert

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-609303-2.50008-x

Cited by 249 publications

(144 citation statements)

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“…Although we know of no other instances in which extraexperimental experience affected a discrimination, it is interesting to note that a process formally similar to experience-facilitated discrimination has been described by Gottlieb (1976). In discussing the possible roles of experience during perceptual development, Gottlieb identified three major types of developmental outcomes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pigeons discriminate pictures of a geographic location

Wilkie

Willson

Kardal

1989

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Four pigeons previously trained to home to the roof of the University of British Columbia psychology building and 4 nonhoming pigeons were trained to discriminate between two sets of color slides projected onto a pecking panel of a Skinner box. One slide set consisted of photographs taken in the vicinity of the psychology building; the other set consisted of similar views taken at locations not previously visited by the homing subjects. All subjects were rewarded for pecking during slides from the first but not the second set. Every few sessions, new "Home" and "Away" slides were introduced during transfer tests. In a final transfer test, a completely new tray of Home and Away slides was introduced. The homing pigeons were slightly (but not statistically significantly) better at discriminating Home from Away slides. The implications of these results for understanding pigeons' homing behavior, concept attainment, and spatial memory are discussed.Pigeons appear to be able to form conceptual discriminations based on photographs of such natural objects as people, fish, water, trees, and leaves (see Herrnstein, 1984, for a review). In these studies, pigeons were rewarded for pecking at projected images that contained the target object (e.g., a tree), and were not rewarded for pecking at images in which the target was absent. Typically, pigeons learned these discriminations rapidly, showed good transfer to novel instances of the target category, and remembered these discriminations over periods of many months (e.g., Vaughan & Greene, 1984). Pigeons seemed to treat these two-dimensional projected images as if they represented "real" three-dimensional objects. Both Cabe (1976) and Lumsden (1977) have shown that pigeons transfer discriminations of actual objects to photographs of the same objects. In addition, Looney and Cohen (1974) have shown that pigeons will attack photographs of conspecifics in situations in which aggressive responding is normally elicited. Perhaps the most convincing evidence that birds treat photographic projections as if these images were actual objects comes from a study of Roberts and Weigl (1984). In that study, investigators tested wild-eaught dark-eyedjuncos in a test chamber that contained two perches mounted on end walls containing projection screens. Images of this species' distinctive summer and winter habitats were projected onto the two screens, and the subjects' preference for an image was measured by recording how much time they spent This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. John Zahradnik kindly donated racing homing pigeons whose offspring served as subjects in this research. C. Von Borman greatly assisted with the data analysis. Send correspondence regarding this paper to Donald M. Wilkie, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T IV7, Canada, or the following E-Mail address: userdonw@mtsg.ubc.ca. on the perch in front of the respective image. Roberts and Weigl found that winter-...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pigeons discriminate pictures of a geographic location

Wilkie

Willson

Kardal

1989

Animal Learning & Behavior

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“…Developing chickens, therefore, become progressively more able to utilize small stimulus changes along a single dimension, as predicted by a widely held tenet of perceptual development (Bornstein, 1979;Gans, 1968;E. Gibson, 1969;Gottlieb, 1971aGottlieb, , 1976Gray & Tardif, 1979;Mistretta & Bradley. 1978;Rubel, 1978;Rubel & Rosenthal, 1975).…”

Section: "Perceptual Sharpening"mentioning

confidence: 93%

“…One interpretation of these data is that the animals become progressively more able to distinguish changes along a single perceptual dimension from general changes in acoustic stimulation. The role of early experience in this "learning" is, at present, unknown, but the work of many investigators predicts that experiences with frequency shifts are necessary for the animals to separate this dimension from other dimensions (Gans, 1968;Gottlieb, 1971aGottlieb, , 1976Kerr et al, 1979;Lashley & Wade, 1946;Peterson, 1962;Tees, 1976;Tracy, 1970).…”

Section: "Perceptual Sharpening"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies on the development of auditory perception have consistently shown an age-related process termed differentiation (Gottlieb, 1977), specificity (Gottlieb, 1976), or sharpening (Rubel & Rosenthal, 1975). In this view, developing organisms become progressively more able to distinguish and utilize subtle differences in their environment (Gans, 1968;E.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Development of responsiveness to suprathreshold acoustic stimulation in chickens.

Gray

Rubel²

1981

Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology

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Developmental changes in an unconditioned response to acoustic stimulation were observed in young chickens. Specifically, durations of distress call (peep) suppression were measured after the onsets of tones that differed in intensity and frequency in 384 newly hatched and 4-day-old chicks. Resuppression was also measured after a 6% change in the frequency of these tones, once the animals had habituated to the original tone. The data showed that the suppression varied systematically as a function of age, intensity, and frequency: (a) the duration of suppression increased with increasing stimulus intensity, as expected; (b) responsiveness to high frequencies grew more rapidly over the first 4 days than responsiveness to low frequencies, an effect indicating a developmental gradient across frequencies with age; (c) resuppression to the 6% change in frequency increased in duration with age; and (d) young birds suppressed vocalizations longer to loud tones in the range of their species' maternal assembly call than to other frequency-intensity combinations. These developmental trends indicate rapid changes in "perceived loudness" and "perceptual sharpening" over the first few days of postnatal life.The normally occurring processes that culminate in mature or asymptotic responses to sensory stimulation remain largely undocumented despite the fact that nearly all animals must somehow come to attend to relevant stimuli and stimulus changes in their environment. This gap in our knowledge is understandable, given the difficulties inherent in interpreting animals' responses to different stimuli and the still greater difficulties in measuring rapid developmental changes in these traits. Nevertheless, these problems in "developmental animal psychophysics" (as this area of inquiry might be termed) can be simplified by describing the functions that relate changes in responses to changes in stimulation, and by describing how these functions change over the first few days of life. To this end, this research is an example of how one stereotyped response (peep suppression in young chickens) is affected bypure tones that differ in frequency and intensity and how the effect of those stimuli changes over the first 96 hr of life.

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“…''Instinctive'' behavior, when viewed as experientially dependent, species-typical behavior, is, therefore, different from historical uses of ''innate'' behavior, which has often been meant to imply behavior that matures without experiential influence (e.g., Thorpe, 1956). Gottlieb viewed experience rather broadly to mean ''sensory or motor function'' (Gottlieb, 1976). This intentionally broad definition opened the possibility of subtle, nonobvious forms of experience, as well as obvious forms, influencing the development of instinctive behavior.…”

Section: Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

From nature to nurture, and back again

Miller

2007

Developmental Psychobiology

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Gilbert Gottlieb's developmental theory views organismic development as a multilevel system involving ongoing transactions among different levels of organization. Here, I review his conception of development as it has been influenced historically and has guided several lines of empirical inquiry focusing on auditory communication in birds. Ecological factors are considered an important means of identifying possible nonlinear (i.e., subtle or nonobvious) forms of experience that play a significant role in species-typical development. Failure to consider such nonlinearities, along with obvious linear influences, undermines the developmental point of view that Gottlieb advocated as a means of teasing apart the intricate nature of organismic development. ß 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 49: 770-779, 2007.

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The Roles of Experience in the Development of Behavior and the Nervous System

Cited by 249 publications

References 54 publications

Pigeons discriminate pictures of a geographic location

Pigeons discriminate pictures of a geographic location

Development of responsiveness to suprathreshold acoustic stimulation in chickens.

From nature to nurture, and back again

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