Rayburn-Reeves Rebecca M, Miller Holly C, Zentall Thomas R
Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0044, USA.
Learn Behav. 2010 May;38(2):169-76. doi: 10.3758/LB.38.2.169.
Numerical competence has been studied in animals under a variety of conditions, but only a few experiments have reported animals' ability to detect absolute number. Capaldi and Miller (1988) tested rats' ability to detect absolute number by using biologically important events--the number of reinforced runs followed by a nonreinforced run--and found that the rats ran significantly slower on the nonreinforced run. In the present experiments, we used a similar procedure. Pigeons were given a sequence of trials in which responding on the first three trials ended in reinforcement but responding on the fourth trial did not (RRRN). When the response requirement on each trial was a single peck (Experiment 1), we found no significant increase in latency to peck on the fourth trial. When the response requirement was increased to 10 pecks (Experiment 2), however, the time to complete the peck requirement was significantly longer on the nonreinforced trial than on the reinforced trials. Tests for control by time, number of responses, and amount of food consumed indicated that the pigeons were using primarily the number of reinforcements obtained in each sequence as a cue for nonreinforcement. This procedure represents a sensitive and efficient method for studying numerical competence in animals.
在各种条件下对动物的数字能力进行了研究，但只有少数实验报告了动物检测绝对数量的能力。卡帕尔迪和米勒（1988年）通过使用具有生物学重要意义的事件——强化奔跑次数后接着一次非强化奔跑——来测试大鼠检测绝对数量的能力，发现大鼠在非强化奔跑时跑得明显更慢。在本实验中，我们采用了类似的程序。给鸽子一系列试验，其中前三次试验的反应以强化结束，但第四次试验的反应没有得到强化（RRRN）。当每次试验的反应要求是单次啄击时（实验1），我们发现在第四次试验中啄击潜伏期没有显著增加。然而，当反应要求增加到10次啄击时（实验2），在非强化试验中完成啄击要求的时间比在强化试验中长得多。对时间、反应次数和消耗食物量的控制测试表明，鸽子主要将每个序列中获得的强化次数作为非强化的线索。这个程序是研究动物数字能力的一种灵敏且有效的方法。
