Change blindness in pigeons (Columba livia): the effects of change salience and timing

Abstract

Change blindness is a well-established phenomenon in humans, in which plainly visible changes in the environment go unnoticed. Recently a parallel change blindness phenomenon has been demonstrated in pigeons. The reported experiment follows up on this finding by investigating whether change salience affects change blindness in pigeons the same way it affects change blindness in humans. Birds viewed alternating displays of randomly generated lines back-projected onto three response keys, with one or more line features on a single key differing between consecutive displays. Change salience was manipulated by varying the number of line features that changed on the critical response key. Results indicated that change blindness is reduced if a change is made more salient, and this matches previous human results. Furthermore, accuracy patterns indicate that pigeons’ effective search area expanded over the course of a trial to encompass a larger portion of the stimulus environment. Thus, the data indicate two important aspects of temporal cognition. First, the timing of a change has a profound influence on whether or not that change will be perceived. Second, pigeons appear to engage in a serial search for changes, in which additional time is required to search additional locations.

The effect of display timing on change blindness in pigeons (Columba livia)

“…Birds were housed in individual cages in a colony room with a 14:10‐hr light:dark cycle and had unrestricted access to water and grit. All four had previous experience with a serial response time task (Herbranson & Stanton, ) and a change detection task (Herbranson et al, ; Herbranson, ).…”

“…Example stimulus displays with (top) and without (bottom) an ISI. Adapted from Figure of Herbranson, .…”

“…Although the primary results from Herbran-All four had previous experience with a serial response time task (Herbranson & Stanton, 2011) and a change detection task (Herbranson et al, 2014;Herbranson, 2015).…”

“…If the peck corresponded to the location of the stimulus change, then the bird was presented 1 Several aspects of the stimulus displays were chosen based on previous research in hopes of yielding a moderate level of accuracy (to avoid potential floor and/or ceiling effects), and maximizing the contrast between ISI and no-ISI trials. Number of changes was based on results from Herbranson (2015). Values for stimulus and ISI durations were informed by the results from Herbranson et al (2014). with approximately 3-s access to mixed grain (access times varied from bird to bird in order to maintain individual running weights).…”

“…Several aspects of the stimulus displays were chosen based on previous research in hopes of yielding a moderate level of accuracy (to avoid potential floor and/or ceiling effects), and maximizing the contrast between ISI and no‐ISI trials. Number of changes was based on results from Herbranson (). Values for stimulus and ISI durations were informed by the results from Herbranson et al ().…”