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Do pigeons (Columba livia) use information about the absence of food appropriately? A further look into suboptimal choice
- Source :
- Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal, Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP), instacron:RCAAP
- Publication Year :
- 2017
-
Abstract
- In the natural environment, when an animal encounters a stimulus that signals the absence of food-a 'bad-news' stimulus-it will most likely redirect its search to another patch or prey. Because the animal does not pay the opportunity cost of waiting in the presence of a bad-news stimulus, the properties of the stimulus (e.g., its duration and probability) may have little impact in the evolution of the decision processes deployed in these circumstances. Hence, in the laboratory, when animals are forced to experience a bad-news stimulus they seem to ignore its duration, even though they pay the cost of waiting. Under certain circumstances, this insensitivity to the opportunity cost can lead to suboptimal preferences, such as a preference for an option yielding a low rather than a high rate of reinforcement. In 2 experiments, we tested Vasconcelos, Monteiro, and Kacelnik's (2015) assumption that, if given the opportunity, animals will escape the bad-news stimulus. To predict when an escape response should occur, we incorporated ideas from the prey choice model into Vasconcelos et al. (2015) model and made 2 novel predictions. Namely, both longer intertrial intervals and longer durations of signals predicting food or no food should lead to higher proportions of escape responses. The results of 2 experiments with pigeons supported these predictions.<br />This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre, University of Minho, Portugal, and was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science through national funds cofinanced by FEDER under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (UID/PSI/01662/2013). This work was also supported by FCT Grant PTDC/MHC-PCN/3540/2012 to Armando Machado. Ines Fortes was supported by FCT Doctoral Grant (SFRH/BD/77061/2011). We thank the members of the Animal Learning and Behavior Laboratory of University of Minho for their comments on a prior version of this paper.<br />info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
- Subjects :
- Opportunity cost
Time Factors
Social Sciences
Escape response
Choice Behavior
Mad news
Stimulus (psychology)
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Animals
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology
Reinforcement
Columbidae
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Bad news
Science & Technology
Behavior, Animal
05 social sciences
Preference
Rate of reinforcement
Food
Prey choice model
Pigeons
Psychology (miscellaneous)
Decision process
Psychology
Suboptimal choice
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Psychomotor Performance
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 19392087
- Volume :
- 131
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of comparative psychology (Washington, D.C. : 1983)
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....f060a3c46ccaa368b41828a411a16538