Prey-lithium aversions. III: Buteo hawks

Brett, Linda P.; Hankins, Walter G.; García, John

doi:10.1016/s0091-6773(76)90302-3

Cited by 99 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Furthermore, for most birds, shifts in preference following illness were accompanied by an overall decrease in responding, indicating a possible aversion to both foods. That these results are consistent with the existing literature on food-aversion learning in general and on food-aversion learning in avians in particular (e.g., Brett, Hankins, & Garcia, 1976;Wilcoxon et al, 1971) supports the potential utility of the concurrent operants methodology in an area of research where it has been traditionally neglected.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

Effects of lithium chloride illness on food preference in pigeons: A concurrent operants procedure for the study of food-aversion learning

Buskist

Miller

1987

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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Food-aversion learning in pigeons was studied using a concurrent operants methodology. Twelve subjects received extensive baseline training consisting of exposure to a concurrent variableintervall~minvs:nable-intervall-min schedule of reinforcement. A different food, milo or peas, was associated With each schedule. Following the establishment of stable preferences, the birds were given exposure to one of the foods in their home cages. Immediately thereafter, the birds were injected with lithium chloride. For half of the birds, the dosage was 0.3 M; for the other half, it was 0.6 M. Within these groups, for half of the subjects, the injection followed ingestion of the preferred food;for the remaining subjects, it followed the nonpreferred food. Subsequently, the animals were again exposed to the operant choice procedure, and alterations in food preference were assessed. In general, postinjection shifts in preference were greater for birds that received the 0.6 M dosage. In all cases, preinjection levels of preference eventually reappeared. In addition to the effects on food preference, lithium toxicosis also tended to suppress animals' overall rates of keypecking. Taken together, these results support the potential applicability of a concurrent operants methodology to the study of food-aversion learning.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

Effects of lithium chloride illness on food preference in pigeons: A concurrent operants procedure for the study of food-aversion learning

Buskist

Miller

1987

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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“…Canada. sions to black mice if a bitter-flavored black mouse had previously been paired with lithium-induced sickness but not when an unflavored black mouse had been so paired (Brett et al, 1976). Similarly, pigeons given blue salt water prior to induction of sickness later exhibited strong aversions to unflavored blue water, while those made sick after drinking unflavored blue water exhibited little or no aversion.…”

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confidence: 98%

Taste potentiates color-sickness associations in pigeons and quail

Lett

1980

Animal Learning & Behavior

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The present experiments assessed cue utilization in pigeons and quail on similar tests of poison-based aversion learning. In Experiments 1 and 2, three groups of pigeons were given colored water, flavored water, or colored flavored water prior to induction of sickness; these experiments differed only as to the specific colors and flavors used as stimuli. In both experiments, the birds trained with flavored water exhibited reliable taste aversions when tested with uncolored flavored water. Similar degrees of aversion were observed whether the flavored water had been colored or uncolored during training, suggesting that the color cue had little or no effect on the conditioning of the flavor cue. In contrast, the flavor cue had a pronounced effect on the conditioning of the color cue. When tested with unflavored colored water, the birds trained with colored flavored water exhibited significantly stronger color aversions than those trained with unflavored colored water. That is, the flavor cue enhanced or potentiated the conditioning of the color cue. In a third experiment, quail were trained in the same way as the pigeons with virtually the same result. The pattern of cue utilization observed in the present experiments with pigeons and quail differs markedly from that proposed by Wilcoxon, Dragoin, and Kral (1971) for quail.However, a reexamination of the results obtained by Wilcoxon et al, suggested that they are susceptible to an alternative interpretation consistent with the present results.The relative salience of taste and visual cues in poison-based aversion learning (PBAL) seems to vary with species. In rats (Wilcoxon, Dragoin, & Kral, 1971), guinea pigs (Braveman, 1975), monkeys (Gorry & Ober, Note 1), and perhaps all mammals, the taste of an ingested substance is more salient than its appearance. Wilcoxon et al. (1971) have proposed that, for quail, visual cues are more important than taste cues in food selection. For the relative salience of visual and taste cues to be opposite in rodents and birds, at least, seems reasonable: Rodents have relatively poor vision and must rely heavily on smell and taste for finding and recognizing food, while quail and other birds have well-developed visual abilities and rely more heavily on vision in foraging for food and drink.Recently, however, evidence has been obtained in hawks (Brett, Hankins, & Garcia, 1976)and in pigeons (Clarke, Westbrook, & Irwin, 1979) that the pattern of cue utilization in these birds differs markedly from that suggested by Wilcoxon et al. (1971) for quail. Unlike quail, both hawks and pigeons readily acquired taste aversions but seemed to require a special condition to form visual aversions. Hawks exhibited visual averThis research was supported in part by Grant A0681 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Canada. I am grateful to Sam Revusky, Gerard Martin, Richard Pohl, and John Garcia for reading this paper and making many helpful suggestions. Thanks also are due (0 Anne Dawe who ran the animals with meticulous care. Re...

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“…Two other groups of birds were exposed to a solution that had both novel color and flavor on the training day. Combining the color and the flavor is known as the potentiation technique since the added flavor potentiates the formation of color-sickness associations in birds (Brett et al, 1976;Clarke et al, 1979;Lett, 1980). The potentiation technique has been reported to aid the transfer of colored-water aversions to colored food in domestic chickens when a single-stimulus test was employed (Gillette, Irwin, Thomas, & Bellingham, 1980).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many species of birds form strong color aversions only under conditions in which a taste is also present in the substance. For example, pigeons, quail, hawks, and geese do not form strong colored-water aversions unless a novel flavor is present at the time of training (Brett, Hankins, & Garcia, 1976;Clarke, Westbrook, & Irwin, 1979;Lett, 1980;B. T. Lett & G. M. Martin, unpublished data).…”

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confidence: 99%

Disruption of chickens’ color aversions when training and test mediums are different

Martin

1984

Animal Learning & Behavior

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In the present experiments, the conditions under which chickens would avoid colored and flavored substances that they had associated with toxicosis were examined. It was found that changing the substance from a fluid to a solid weakened color aversions more than flavor aversions. This was true despite the fact that color and flavor aversions appeared to be of equal strength and despite the fact that the birds could recognize the colors in the changed substance. Color aversions were weakened only by changes in substances at the time of test. They were not disrupted by changes in flavor or by substitution of a different container at the time of test. These data are inconsistent with conventional theories of conditioning, which would predict equal disruption of color and flavor aversions. It is suggested that birds treat color as a signal that a particular substance is dangerous and treat flavor as an aversive stimulus independent of the medium (ct. Garcia, Rusiniak, & Brett, 1977).Birds' success in associating color cues with induced sickness is influenced by a variety of factors.

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Prey-lithium aversions. III: Buteo hawks

Cited by 99 publications

References 5 publications

Effects of lithium chloride illness on food preference in pigeons: A concurrent operants procedure for the study of food-aversion learning

Effects of lithium chloride illness on food preference in pigeons: A concurrent operants procedure for the study of food-aversion learning

Taste potentiates color-sickness associations in pigeons and quail

Disruption of chickens’ color aversions when training and test mediums are different

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