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Biomedical subjects

A C CATANIA

Publications and source records attributed to A C CATANIA.

14 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1965

INTEROCULAR TRANSFER OF DISCRIMINATIONS IN THE PIGEON.

Pigeons with one eye covered were trained to discriminate intensities or colors of stimuli located to one side of the head, or intensities, colors or forms of stimuli located in front of the beak. Each discrimination transferred to the covered eye, even when previous training with the covered eye included the reversal of the tested discrimination. Pigeons also were able to learn conditional discriminations in which appropriate responding depended on which eye was covered.

Animals↗
PubMed1964

ON THE VISUAL ACUITY OF THE PIGEON.

Several lines of evidence suggest that the pigeon is near-sighted for stimuli located in front of its beak and far-sighted for stimuli located to the sides of its head.

Animals↗
PubMed1963

Experimental control of superstitious responding inhumans.

Superstitions were demonstrated with human subjects when presses on one button were reinforced on a VI 30-sec schedule while presses on a second were never reinforced. Superstitious responding, on the second button, was often maintained because presses on that button were frequently followed by reinforcement for a subsequent press on the first button. The introduction of a changeover delay (COD), which separated in time presses on the second button and subsequent reinforced presses on the first button, reduced or eliminated the superstitious responding of these subjects. Some complex superstitions were also demonstrated with other subjects for which the COD was in effect from the beginning of the session.

Humans↗
PubMed1963

Concurrent performances: reinforcement interaction and response independence.

When a pigeon's pecks on two keys were reinforced concurrently by two independent variable-interval (VI) schedules, one for each key, the response rate on either key was given by the equation: R(1)=Kr(1)/(r(1)+r(2))(5/6), where R is response rate, r is reinforcement rate, and the subscripts 1 and 2 indicate keys 1 and 2. When the constant, K, was determined for a given pigeon in one schedule sequence, the equation predicted that pigeon's response rates in a second schedule sequence. The equation derived from two characteristics of the performance: the total response rate on the two keys was proportional to the one-sixth power of the total reinforcement rate provided by the two VI schedules; and, the pigeon matched the relative response rate on a key to the relative reinforcement rate for that key. The equation states that response rate on one key depends in part on reinforcement rate for the other key, but implies that it does not depend on response rate on the other key. This independence of response rates on the two keys was demonstrated by presenting a stimulus to the pigeon whenever one key's schedule programmed reinforcement. This maintained the reinforcement rate for that key, but reduced the response rate almost to zero. The response rate on the other key, nevertheless, continued to vary with reinforcement rates according to the equation.

Animals↗
PubMed1963

Concurrent performances: a baseline for the study of reinforcement magnitude.

When a pigeon's pecking on a single key was reinforced by a variable-interval (VI) schedule of reinforcement, the rate of pecking was insensitive to changes in the duration of reinforcement from 3 to 6 sec. When, however, the pigeon's pecking on each of two keys was concurrently reinforced by two independent VI schedules, one for each key, the rate of pecking was directly proportional to the duration of reinforcement.

Animals↗
PubMed1962

Temporal discrimination in pigeons.

Pigeons trained to peck a lighted key were presented with a key that was alternately dark and lighted. The key was dark for intervals of from 3 to 30 seconds. Pecking of the lighted key was reinforced only after the shortest or, in a second experiment, the longest interval that the key was dark. The pigeons were able to discriminate the duration of the dark interval.

Animals↗
PubMed1962

Independence of concurrent responding maintained by interval schedules of reinforcement.

A pigeon's responses were reinforced on a variable-interval schedule on one key; and, concurrently, either a multiple or a fixed-interval schedule of reinforcement was in effect on a second key. These concurrent schedules, conc VI 3 (mult VI 3 EXT) or conc VI 3 FI 6, were programmed with or without a changeover delay (COD). Because the COD provided that responses on one key could not be followed by reinforced responses on the other key, responding on one key was not likely to accidentally come under the control of the reinforcement schedule on the other. When the COD was used, the performances on each key were comparable to the performances maintained when these interval schedules are programmed separately. The VI schedule maintained a relatively constant rate of responding, even though the rate of responding on the second key varied in a manner appropriate to the schedule on the second key. The mult VI 3 EXT schedule maintained two separate rates of responding: a relatively high rate during the VI 3 component, and almost no responding during the EXT component. The FI schedule maintained the gradually increasing rate of responding within each interval that is characteristic of the performance maintained by this schedule. The concurrent performances, however, did include certain interactions involving the local characteristics of responding and the over-all rates of responding maintained by the various schedules. The relevance of the present findings to an inter-response time analysis of VI responding, a chaining account of FI responding, and the concept of the reflex reserve was discussed.

Animals↗