A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF THE DYNAMICS OF THE PECKING RESPONSE IN PIGEONS¹

Abstract

The pecking response of pigeons is usually measured by a transducer that senses the preseCice or absence of a response. Typically, the response force as a function of time has not beet accurately measuredl. Data were collected using a transducer specially designed to recor(l thc waveform of the pecking respolIse in pigeons. Each responsc on the target surface of the tranlsducer was reinforced antd followe(l by a blackout. The response was stored on an oscilloscope screen and the peak force atitd tluration of the response were recorded manually from the oscilloscope screen. The mean peak force of the response substantially exceeded the minimum criterion for reinforcement of 35 g (0343 Newtons) of force. Photographs of the waveforts of pecks on the transducer showed great sariability in response force and demonstrated that the waveform produced by peckinig the target sutface was complex. The respotises were frequentlv asymmetrical with the rise time shorter than the fall time, although no single verbal descriptiois could be applied to all of the waveforms. Bimodal peaks and double responses were observed and the first peak or response was tisually larger than the second. A disadvantage of the transducer was that pecking produced oscillation of the transducer at its resonanit freqtieiicy. Several differenit types of trainsdttcers lsave beels tisecl to measure the dynamics of the pecking responise its tlse pigeon. Some transIltlcers were clesigtsecl to measture the force of the response; otlhers were designed so that the reqittire(l force cotiltI be experimentally manipulatedl. Hefferlinie, Birch, and Gentry (1961) enmployed a pressure transducer. They found a substantial error in the outpttt of the transdttcer depending on where the pigeon pecked the target area. The major disadvantage of their transduLcer was that the amount of force witls whliich the pigeons strtlck the key far exceeded that required to produce reinforcement; the birds began to bleed around the beak anti eventually stopped responding. Chltlng (1965) mottnted an extension spring on the conventional response key so that the minimtlm force required to operate it could be adjusted. The key provided an ingenious and inexpensive technique for detecting when a response exceeded the minimum force criterion, but it had the disadvantage of not sensing the minimum force criterion. Cliung varied the minimum effective force of a response and found that, beyond a certain force value, the responise rate decreased with increas-267 kL I 1970. 13, [267][268][269][270][271][272][273][274][275][276][277][278] NUMBERt 2 (MA(.RCH)

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FIXED‐RATIO PERFORMANCE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF RIBONUCLEIC ACID1

“…The technology for equivalent approaches in the laboratory is available (e.g., Weiss, 1970b;Rilling, Kramer, and Askew, 1970) and ought to be applied more vigorously.…”

Dissecting the Conditioned Pecking Response: An Integrated System for the Analysis of Pecking Response Parameters

“…For the interface (controller) hardware provided with the Duratouch screen, a contact duration of at least 13 ms was required to generate a readout of the touch location in x and y coordinates. Unpublished observations from our laboratory and some published reports (Rilling, Kramer, & Askew, 1970;Schwartz & Williams, 1972;Whipple & Fantino, 1980) suggested that a substantial proportion of conditioned pecking-response contacts may be less than 10 ms in duration. For this reason, we replaced the commercial controller with a circuit that samples the x, y outputs of the touch screen at rates sufficient to detect the location of a peck contact with a duration of 2 ms or greater.…”

“…In previous studies of pecking response duration, contact duration was measured either as the duration of displacement of a standard pecking-response key (e.g., Schwartz & Williams, 1972;Whipple & Fantino, 1980) or by using force transducers, which provide a voltage analogue representation of the force-time function (LaMon & Zeigler, 1984;Rilling et al, 1970). The waveforms and the distributions of touch screen contact durations shown in Figure 4 reflect the direct measurement of contact duration, independent of pecking force.…”

Effects of white and infrared lighting on apomorphine-induced pecking in pigeons

“…The time series were then filtered to find pecks. Our definition of pecks arose out of our pilot work and reports in the literature on the duration and forcefulness of pigeons’ pecks (e.g., Rilling et al, 1970). Eventually, our definition identified pecks as any event that exceeded 80 g and returned to subthreshold forces (< 10 g) within 30 ms.…”