Department of Psychology, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio 43606, USA.
Behav Res Methods. 2013 Jun;45(2):383-92. doi: 10.3758/s13428-012-0269-y.
Although the domestic pigeon is commonly used in learning experiments, it is a notoriously difficult subject in auditory psychophysical experiments, even those in which it need only respond when it detects a sound. This is because pigeons tend to respond in the absence of sound-that is, they have a high false-positive rate-which makes it difficult to determine a pigeon's audiogram. However, false positives are easily controlled in the method of conditioned suppression/avoidance, in which a pigeon is trained to peck a key to obtain food and to stop pecking whenever it detects a sound that signals impending electric shock. Here, we describe how to determine psychophysical thresholds in pigeons using a method of conditioned suppression in which avoidable shock is delivered through a bead chain wrapped around the base of a pigeon's wings. The resulting audiogram spans the range from 2 to 8000 Hz; it falls approximately in the middle of the distribution of previous pigeon audiograms and supports the finding of Kreithen and Quine (Journal of Comparative Physiology 129:1-4, 1979) that pigeons hear infrasound.
尽管家鸽通常被用于学习实验，但在听觉心理物理实验中，即使只需要在检测到声音时做出反应，它们也是一个众所周知的难题。这是因为鸽子往往在没有声音的情况下做出反应，也就是说，它们的假阳性率很高，这使得很难确定鸽子的听力图。然而，在条件抑制/回避的方法中，很容易控制假阳性，在这种方法中，鸽子被训练啄键以获得食物，并在检测到预示着即将到来的电击的声音时停止啄键。在这里，我们描述了如何使用一种条件抑制的方法来确定鸽子的心理物理阈值，在这种方法中，可避免的电击是通过缠绕在鸽子翅膀底部的珠链传递的。由此产生的听力图覆盖了 2 到 8000 Hz 的范围；它大致处于先前鸽子听力图分布的中间位置，支持了 Kreithen 和 Quine（《比较生理学杂志》129：1-4，1979 年）的发现，即鸽子能听到次声。
