Attentional tradeoffs in the pigeon.
Bigger differences between right and wrong choices speed learning, but attention to one clear cue can crowd out the rest.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Nine pigeons learned a four-part visual task. They had to pick the key that matched on color, brightness, shape, and size all at once.
The team made the task easier or harder by changing how different the right key looked from the wrong keys.
What they found
Every bird mastered the four-way match. When the differences were bigger, they learned faster.
Bigger gaps in one dimension drew their eyes away from the others. This shows attention has a cost.
How this fits with other research
BERRYMAELLIOTT et al. (1962) saw the same speed-up in rats sixty years ago. Bigger S+/S- gaps cut errors. The pigeon data say the rule still holds when four cues must be watched together.
Ghosh et al. (2004) also ran pigeons on tricky pictures. Their birds weighed local details more than global ones. V et al. now show that when many details matter, pigeons juggle them one at a time, not all at once.
Thompson et al. (1974) found that excitatory and inhibitory gradients add up. The new study fits: when one dimension is made extra different, its "gain" goes up and the others dip, just the gradient model predicts.
Why it matters
If a client must attend to many cues, start with big differences on each one. As mastery grows, fade the differences together so attention stays balanced. Watch for one cue stealing the show—probe with mixed-size differences to be sure control is shared.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Make the S+ and S- differ by at least a large share on each key feature, then thin the differences together once responding is steady.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
We deployed the Multiple Necessary Cues (MNC) discrimination task to see if pigeons can simultaneously attend to four different dimensions of complex visual stimuli. Specifically, we trained nine pigeons (Columba livia) on a go/no go discrimination to peck only 1 of 16 compound stimuli created from all possible combinations of two stimulus values from four separable visual dimensions: shape (circle/square), size (large/small), line orientation (horizontal/vertical), and brightness (dark/light). Some of the pigeons had CLHD (circle, large, horizontal, dark) as the positive stimulus (S+), whereas others had SSVL (square, small, vertical, light) as the S+. We recorded touchscreen pecking during the first 15 s that each stimulus was presented on each training trial. Discrimination training continued until pigeons' rates of responding to all 15 negative stimuli (S-s) fell to less than 15% of their response rates to the S+. All pigeons acquired the MNC discrimination, suggesting that they attended to all four dimensions of the multidimensional stimuli. Learning rate was similar for all four dimensions, indicating equivalent salience of the discriminative stimuli. The more dimensions along which the S-s differed from the S+, the faster was discrimination learning, suggesting an added benefit from increasing perceptual disparities of the S-s from the S+. Finally, evidence of attentional tradeoffs among the four dimensions was seen during discrimination learning, raising interesting questions concerning the possible control of behavior by elemental and configural stimuli.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2014 · doi:10.1002/jeab.82