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Does Terrain Slope Really Dominate Goal Searching?, Daniele Nardi
Does Terrain Slope Really Dominate Goal Searching?, Daniele Nardi
Faculty Research and Creative Activity
If you can locate a target by using one reliable source of information, why would you use an unreliable one? A similar question has been faced in a recent study on homing pigeons, in which, despite the presence of better predictors of the goal location, the slope of the floor in an arena dominated the searching process. This piece of evidence seems to contradict straightforward accounts of associative learning, according to which behavior should be controlled by the stimulus that best predicts the reward, and has fueled interest toward one question that, to date, has received scarce attention in the …
Slope-Driven Goal Location Behavior In Pigeons, Daniele Nardi, Kristian P. Nitsch, Verner P. Bingman
Slope-Driven Goal Location Behavior In Pigeons, Daniele Nardi, Kristian P. Nitsch, Verner P. Bingman
Faculty Research and Creative Activity
A basic tenet of principles of associative learning applicable to models of spatial learning is that a cue should be assigned greater weight if it is a better predictor of the goal location. Pigeons were trained to locate a goal in an acute corner of an isosceles trapezoid arena, presented on a slanted floor with 3 (Experiment 1) or 2 (Experiment 2) orientations. The goal could be consistently determined by the geometric shape of the arena; however, its position with respect to the slope gradient varied, such that slope position was not a good predictor of the goal. Pigeons learned …