Superstition: a matter of bias, not detectability.
Pigeons discriminated between stimulus changes dependent on their pecking and stimulus changes occurring independently of their behavior. Their performance was accurate, and when the payoffs for "hits" and "correct rejections" were varied, their response bias varied in a fashion similar to that of human observers detecting signals in a background of noise.
Killeen
P R
PR
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA.
D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D010856:Columbidae; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005502:Food; D009042:Motivation; D011336:Probability; D012372:ROC Curve; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D012201:Reward; D013239:Stereotyped Behavior; D013483:Superstitions