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SOME DETERMINERS OF ATTENTION 1
Author(s) -
Johnson Daniel F.,
Cumming William W.
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.1968.11-157
Subject(s) - stimulus (psychology) , stimulus control , second order stimulus , psychology , neutral stimulus , audiology , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , medicine , nicotine
Three experiments, using a total of 13 pigeons, examined the stimulus control acquired by the separate components of a compound visual stimulus transilluminating the pecking key. Experiment I measured the control acquired by components of compound discriminative stimuli used in discrimination training. Experiment II sought to demonstrate the effect of pretraining a single stimulus discrimination on control acquired by each component in a compound stimulus discrimination. It also investigated the effect of training the compound stimulus discrimination before the single stimulus discrimination. Experiment III sought a continuous stimulus control function when pretraining stimulus intensities were varied. The results suggest that the extent to which a bird “pays attention” to a stimulus, defined in terms of the degree of stimulus control acquired by that stimulus, is determined by how well it previously learned to discriminate that stimulus from other stimuli.