Stimulus control of heart rate by auditory frequency and auditory pattern in pigeons.
Heart-rate conditioning lets you map fine auditory thresholds without stopping ongoing food behavior.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team trained pigeons to change their heart rate when they heard different tones.
Each bird wore tiny sensors. A computer gave grain if the heart sped up or slowed down on cue.
They then tested how small the tone difference could get before the bird no longer noticed.
What they found
The birds learned the heart-rate game in a few sessions.
They could tell tones apart even when the difference was smaller than one piano key.
The same method also showed the birds noticed silent gaps inside tone patterns.
How this fits with other research
Morse et al. (1966) first proved pigeons can be heart-rate conditioned at all. Dove et al. (1974) added the discrimination twist and still got quick, clear results.
Zimmerman (1969) used conditioned suppression to map odor thresholds. The new heart-rate method gives the same fine detail without stopping the bird’s main food pecking.
Green et al. (1986) later showed pigeons discriminate human words using key pecks. Heart-rate gives another window when pecking would interfere with the sound task.
Why it matters
If you need to check tiny stimulus differences in non-humans, heart-rate conditioning is a quiet, sensitive tool. It keeps the animal working for food while you measure what it hears, smells, or sees. Next time a learner can’t easily press a key or speak, think autonomic — the body can do the talking.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A new method was used to investigate auditory discrimination in pigeons. Basically, the method involves the repeated presentation of one stimulus preceding the single presentation of a different stimulus that is followed by shock. Stimulus control is assessed by the increase in heart rate that accompanies the presentation of the second stimulus. In Experiment 1, the efficiency of the method was explored by determining the frequency difference thresholds of pigeons at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz. Weber fractions comparable to those reported in an earlier study using the conditioned suppression method were obtained. Experiment 2 demonstrated that, contrary to results of earlier studies, auditory temporal patterns can exercise differential stimulus control in pigeons. One stimulus consisted of the presentation (once per second) of a 1000-Hz pure tone of 150 msec duration followed by a 2000-Hz pure tone of equal duration; the other was the same except for the reversed order of the frequency components. Results indicated that the frequency pattern and not the loudness pattern of the stimuli was the cue controlling heart-rate changes.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1974 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1974.21-297