Pigeon (Columba livia) and rat (Rattus norvegicus) performance in the midsession reversal procedure depends upon cue dimensionality.

McMillan, Neil; Kirk, Chelsea R.; Roberts, William A.

doi:10.1037/a0036562

Cited by 31 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This pattern of behavior therefore generated a large number of Berrors,^or responses that did not result in the delivery of grain reinforcement and that persisted even after extensive training. McMillan, Kirk, and Roberts, (2014) reported similar results in rats with respect to perseverative and anticipatory errors in a spatial task requiring navigation of a T-maze. Taken together, these results represent an effect whereby animals' choice behavior is imprecisely controlled and therefore generates many missed opportunities for reinforcement.…”

Section: Behavioral Variabilitysupporting

confidence: 62%

Midsession shifts in reward probability and the control of behavioral variability

Stahlman

Leising

2016

Learn Behav

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Extensive research has shown that the variability of organismal behavior is great when contingent reinforcement is delayed, small, or improbable. This research has generally employed stable response-reinforcer relationships, and therefore is limited in its explanatory scope with respect to a dynamic environment. We conducted two experiments to investigate whether pigeons' conditioned pecking behavior shows anticipatory or perseverative patterns of behavioral variability when the reinforcement probability reliably changes within experimental sessions. In Experiment 1, three pigeons received alternating sessions in which the reinforcement probability (35% or 4.2%) was shifted at the midpoint of each session in the presence of the same discrete cue. Experiment 2 featured a similar design, but with the inclusion of a discrete visual cue that changed at the session midpoint, and thus unambiguously indicated reinforcement probability. Local reinforcement rates only reliably controlled response variability when a discrete visual cue was available. Without this, pigeons did not discriminate between trial types in the first halves of sessions, and showed evidence of perseveration of response variability following a within-session shift. Critically, this is the first experimental demonstration that the relationship between reinforcement probability and behavioral variability is moderated by another factor (i.e., trial position within a session). This study thus expands our understanding of the control of behavioral variability as a function of experiential factors.

show abstract

Section: Behavioral Variabilitysupporting

confidence: 62%

Midsession shifts in reward probability and the control of behavioral variability

Stahlman

Leising

2016

Learn Behav

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These results suggest that rats' response biases are flexible with training but show different initial levels of stay and shift behavior, depending on the apparatus. This result may further suggest that the comparison of rats in a T-maze to pigeons in an operant box may have more to do with the apparatus than with differences in response typographies (McMillan et al, 2014).…”

mentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Specifically, it was hypothesized that the rats' superior performance on this task (Rayburn-Reeves, Stagner, et al, 2013) may have been due to the fact that the rats pressed the lever with their paw rather than made the response with their nose, potentially allowing the lever rats to better bridge the 5-s ITI (see, e.g., Laude et al, 2014;McMillan et al, 2014). To test this hypothesis, we included a group for which the response consisted of a nose-poke, which more closely resembled the pigeons' key peck.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further evidence that the nature of the response contributes to the difference in accuracy between species has come from the finding that when rats were trained in a T-maze version of the midsession reversal task, they showed heightened anticipatory and perseverative errors (McMillan et al, 2014). This led the authors to argue that the rats' excellent performance with the two-lever task may have been due to their ability to use their body position as a cue during the ITI (see also Laude et al, 2014;McMillan & Roberts, 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although it is possible that the difference between rats' and pigeons' performance on this task reflects a species difference in sensitivity to the feedback from the outcome of the previous trial(s), it is also possible that the rats used the position of their leverpressing paw as a cue during the intertrial interval (Laude et al, 2014;McMillan, Kirk, & Roberts, 2014;McMillan & Roberts, 2015). Thus, the rats' superior performance may have stemmed from being able to retain the response from the previous trial over the course of the intertrial interval (ITI).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Rats’ midsession reversal performance: the nature of the response

2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The midsession reversal task involves a simple simultaneous discrimination that predictably reverses midway through a session. Under various conditions, pigeons generally both anticipate the reversal and perseverate once it has occurred, whereas rats tend to make very few of either kind of error. In the present research, we investigated the hypothesis that the difference in performance between rats and pigeons is related to the nature of the responses made. We hypothesized that rats could have been better at bridging the intertrial interval by keeping the relevant paw close to the lever while eating, whereas the pigeons had to remove their beak from the response key and insert it into the feeder, thus making it difficult to mediate the response last made. In the present experiment, in successive phases, rats were trained to leverpress or nose-poke on a 40-trial midsession reversal, an 80-trial midsession reversal, and a variable-location reversal. The results showed that the leverpress group acquired the task faster than the nose-poke group, but that both groups reached comparable levels of performance. Thus, the difference in the natures of the responses cannot fully account for the differences in accuracy between rats and pigeons. Additionally, differences in the types of errors made by the two groups suggest that the nature of the response plays different roles in the performance of this task.

show abstract

The effect of reinforcement probability on time discrimination in the midsession reversal task

Santos

Soares

Vasconcelos

et al. 2019

J Exper Analysis Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We examined how biasing time perception affects choice in a midsession reversal task. Given a simultaneous discrimination between stimuli S1 and S2, with choices of S1 reinforced during the first, but not the second half of the trials, and choices of S2 reinforced during the second, but not the first half of the trials, pigeons show anticipation errors (premature choices of S2) and perseveration errors (belated choices of S1). This suggests that choice depends on timing processes, on predicting when the contingency reverses based on session duration. We exposed 7 pigeons to a midsession reversal task and manipulated the reinforcement rate on each half of the session. Compared to equal reinforcement rates on both halves of the session, when the reinforcement rate on the first half was lower than on the second half, performance showed more anticipation and less perseveration errors, and when the reinforcement rate on the first half was higher than on the second half, performance showed a remarkable reduction of both types of errors. These results suggest that choice depends on both time into the session and the outcome of previous trials. They also challenge current models of timing to integrate local effects.

show abstract

Pigeon (Columba livia) and rat (Rattus norvegicus) performance in the midsession reversal procedure depends upon cue dimensionality.

Cited by 31 publications

References 13 publications

Midsession shifts in reward probability and the control of behavioral variability

Midsession shifts in reward probability and the control of behavioral variability

Rats’ midsession reversal performance: the nature of the response

The effect of reinforcement probability on time discrimination in the midsession reversal task

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About