Maintenance of key pecking by response-independent food presentation: the role of the modality of the signal for food.
Visual cues instantly run the show; auditory cues need a visual boost first.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Pigeons pecked a small key. Food arrived no matter what they did.
The only cue was the key color. Later the cue switched to a brief tone.
Researchers watched if pecking kept going when the cue changed from sight to sound.
What they found
Birds started and kept pecking when the key color meant food was coming.
The color cue worked right away. The tone cue did not.
After the color had trained the birds, the tone could take over control.
How this fits with other research
Blough (1971) showed the same lab first proved that free-food signals boost key pecking. Van Hemel (1973) adds that the sense used for the signal matters.
McGee et al. (1983) later tested rats. Visual cues made rats approach, but sounds did not. The mixed rat data extend the pigeon finding: eyes beat ears.
Laugeson et al. (2014) later found brief food signals did not protect pecking from extinction. Their null result looks opposite, but they asked a new question about long-term persistence, not first learning.
Why it matters
Pick the right sense for your cue. Visual stimuli grab control faster than auditory ones. If you must use a sound, first pair it with a visual cue the learner already follows. Then fade the visual cue out. This transfer trick works for birds and rats; it can work for humans too.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Three pigeons were exposed to a series of procedures in which periods of response-independent food presentation, on a variable-time schedule, alternated with periods in which food was never presented. The stimuli that signalled periods of food availability or non-availability varied from one procedure to the next, and were sometimes key colors, sometimes tones, and sometimes compounds of both. Key pecking was initiated and maintained when key color was a signal for food; key pecking was not initiated when a tone was the signal for food. However, control of key pecking that was already established could be transferred from key color to tone, and subsequently, initiated by the tone. It is suggested that for pigeons, pre-experimental relationships exist among food, visual stimuli, and pecking, and that a similar relationship, which includes auditory stimuli, must be induced in the laboratory.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1973 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1973.20-17