Visual dominance in the pigeon.
Vision beats sound for pigeons, but smart reinforcement can still shift control to another sense.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers put pigeons in a box with two treadles.
A light and a tone happened at the same time.
The birds had to pick which treadle to press.
One treadle paid off if they noticed the light.
The other paid off if they noticed the tone.
What they found
Every bird picked the light-side treadle almost every time.
Visual cues won the race against sound.
Even when both cues were equally strong, the light still ruled.
How this fits with other research
Wilkie (1973) showed the opposite can happen.
That team used gravity cues instead of sound.
With the right pay-off, pigeons learned to ignore the visual line and peck the gravity-true one.
Segal (1962) also found visual power, but in a timing job.
Pigeons waited to peck until a visual "clock" told them food was near.
Together the three papers say: vision usually leads, yet reinforcement can flip the lead to another sense if you arrange strong contingencies.
Why it matters
Your client may hear your instruction yet watch something else.
If visual and auditory cues clash, expect the eyes to win.
Put key prompts where the client can see them.
When you need ear control, cut competing pictures or movements.
Reinforce listening responses heavily if you want sound to rule.
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Place the instruction card closer to the client’s eye line and dim nearby screens so the visual prompt wins.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
In Experiment 1, three pigeons were trained to obtain grain by depressing one foot treadle in the presence of a 746-Hertz tone stimulus and by depressing a second foot treadle in the presence of a red light stimulus. Intertrial stimuli included white light and the absence of tone. The latencies to respond on auditory element trials were as fast, or faster, than on visual element trials, but pigeons always responded on the visual treadle when presented with a compound stimulus composed of the auditory and visual elements. In Experiment 2, pigeons were trained on the auditory-visual discrimination task using as trial stimuli increases in the intensity of auditory or visual intertrial stimuli. Again, pigeons showed visual dominance on subsequent compound stimulus test trials. In Experiment 3, on compound test trials, the onset of the visual stimulus was delayed relative to the onset of the auditory stimulus. Visual treadle responses generally occurred with delay intervals of less than 500 milliseconds, and auditory treadle responses generally occurred with delay intervals of greater than 500 milliseconds. The results are discussed in terms of Posner, Nissen, and Klein's (1976) theory of visual dominance in humans.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1978 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1978.30-129