THE CONTROL OF RESPONSE FORM: FEEDING AND CONDITIONED RESPONDING IN THE PIGEON.
Item
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Title
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THE CONTROL OF RESPONSE FORM: FEEDING AND CONDITIONED RESPONDING IN THE PIGEON.
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Identifier
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AAI8203295
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identifier
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8203295
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Creator
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LAMON, BRENT CLARK.
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Contributor
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Philip Zeigler
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Date
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1981
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Psychobiology
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Abstract
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The control of response form was examined by providing a quantitative analysis of the movements subserving feeding and conditioned responding for food reinforcers. The aim of these experiments was to clarify the stimulus control and sensorimotor organization of these motor patterns by specifying a series of common behavioral elements that would characterize both feeding and conditioned keypecking. Based on high-speed cine analysis of the movements, the moment of substrate contact was chosen as an unambiguous temporal landmark that would provide behavioral endpoints for three response elements: beak opening, eye closure and the spatial location (trajectory) of the peck. A photographic system activated at the moment of substrate-contact provided measurements of these response characteristics and a force-transducer provided measures of peak force and duration of substrate contact for each response. In order to compare the behaviors under similar testing situations, both feeding and conditioned pecks were directed to a floor-mounted response-key.;In the feeding situation a range of seed sizes were placed on the response-key for each bird to eat. For conditioned responses, the following independent variables were examined: (1) Reinforcement Contingency: discriminated operant (CRF, VR3, and extinction), Pavlovian (autoshaping procedure); dots of 5 sizes projected on white background, white dots on black background, seed key (seed glued to center of key).;The results are summarized as follows: (1) Quantitative descriptions of the form of feeding and conditioned keypecks were provided. The average force of conditioned keypecks was substantially greater than the average force of consummatory pecks. Group means for duration, beak opening and eye closure did not differ statistically. (2) The autoshaping and operant conditioning schedules produced keypecks of similar form. The extinction schedule produced a slight, but statistically significant, increase in mean peck force. (3) For most conditioned keypecks the measurements of force and duration were positively correlated, indicating that keypeck duration was primarily determined by the force of impact and the physical properties of the response-key. (4) Shifting to a larger seed size as the reinforcer produced an increase in beak opening proportional to the change in the size of the reinforcer for both conditioning groups. (5) During feeding, beak opening at the moment of contact was typically greater than seed size. However, errors (gape < seed size) often followed an increase in seed size, suggesting that beak opening was determined by the size of seeds previously eaten rather than visual information available before each peck is initiated. (6) Neither black nor white targets on conditioning signals consistently controlled peck location, although the white dots received a significantly greater number of pecks on target for both groups. (7) In the seed-key condition both conditioning groups initially directed keypecks at the seed, but within the first ten responses pecks were directed around the seed on the periphery of the key. Such outcome-contingent control indicates that continued orientation of peck location requires appropriate response-produced sensory feedback, while the propensity to peck can be maintained by delayed feedback from subsequent access to grain.;These findings suggest that assumptions of a unitary organization for both feeding and conditioned responses (eg. learned-release or conditioned elicitation of feeding) provide little explanatory utility in the analysis of response form. The movement patterns examined in this study were composed of several behavioral elements, each with potentially different and independent sources of control. As an analysis of response form, these data provide implications for both behavior theory and neurobehavioral studies of motor-control mechanisms.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
