Scaling pigeons' choice of feeds: bigger is better.
Preferences of hungry pigeons among 10 grains and pellets were analyzed using a Thurstone scaling procedure. The recovered scales were positively correlated with size of the feed. The correlations improved when the Thurstonian assumption of equal-sized discriminal dispersions (Case V) was replaced with the assumption of proportional-sized dispersions (Case VI), as entailed by Weber's law. The correlations weakened when the experiments were conducted with the pigeons close to their free-feeding weights, where the probability of sampling alternative grains increased. In the final experiment, exposure to a large pellet shifted the preferences between two smaller pellets.
Killeen
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Psychology Department Arizona State University, Tempe 85287-1104.
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D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D002755:Choice Behavior; D010856:Columbidae; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology