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CONTEXT SPECIFICITY OF OPERANT DISCRIMINATIVE PERFORMANCE IN PIGEONS: II NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT CONDITIONS
Author(s) -
Thomas David R.,
Empedocles Stephen,
Morrison Spencer K.,
Bing Mark Nathaniel
Publication year - 1993
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.1993.60-313
Subject(s) - stimulus (psychology) , odor , psychology , discriminative model , reinforcement , context (archaeology) , discrimination learning , stimulus generalization , stimulus control , cognitive psychology , operant conditioning , audiology , communication , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , computer science , social psychology , biology , perception , medicine , paleontology , nicotine
Six experiments were performed to explore the necessary and sufficient conditions for producing context specificity of discriminative operant performance in pigeons. In Experiment 1, pigeons learned a successive discrimination (red S+/blue S–) in two chambers that had a particular odor present and between which they were frequently switched. The birds subsequently learned the reversal (blue S+/red S–) in one of these chambers with a different odor present. When switched to the alternative chamber, although the odor and the reinforcement contingency were still appropriate to the reversal, performance appropriate to the original discrimination recurred in subjects for which the houselights were on during training and testing but not for those for which the houselights were off. This indicated the importance of visual contextual cues in producing context specificity. Experiment 2 showed that the frequent switching between boxes in initial training was of no consequence, presumably because the apparatus cues were highly salient to the subjects. Experiment 3 showed significantly less context specificity when odor cues were omitted. Experiment 4 showed that simply using a different reinforced stimulus in each phase of training was ineffective in producing context specificity. Experiment 5 showed that the generalization test procedure used in Experiment 4 was sensitive to context specificity when discrimination‐reversal training was used with different odors in the two training phases. Experiment 6 replicated the results of Experiment 4, but then showed that when different odors accompanied the two training phases, context specificity was obtained with the single‐stimulus paradigm. Thus in both single‐stimulus and discrimination‐reversal paradigms, redundant odor cues potentiated learning about apparatus cues.