Goto, K., & Lea, S. E. G. (2003).
Discrimination of direction of movements in pigeons following previous experience of motion/static discrimination.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
80, 29-47.
Two experiments examined pigeons' discrimination of directional
movement using pictorial images shown on computer monitors.
Stimuli consisted of the movement of a bird against a stationary
background or the movement of the background behind a stationary
bird. In Experiment 1, pigeons were trained to discriminate
either leftward or rightward motion of either the bird or the
background from stationary frames drawn from the same movies. The
background-discrimination group acquired the discrimination
faster than the bird-discrimination group. In Experiment 2,
transfer of the discrimination from the task of Experiment 1 to a
discrimination between motion directions was examined. Most of
the pigeons learned this discrimination rapidly, whereas in a
pilot study in which direction discrimination was trained without
previous static/movement discrimination, learning was poor. It
appears that an experimental history of movement against
stationary discrimination promoted the pigeons' learning of the
directional motion discrimination.
Key words: motion, motion perception, discrimination, salience, key peck, pigeon