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Related Experiment Videos

Teaching pigeons to commit base-rate neglect.

Edmund Fantino1, Inna Glaz Kanevsky, Shawn R Charlton

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0109, USA. efantino@ucsd.edu

Psychological Science
|September 27, 2005
PubMed
Summary

Pigeons, like humans, can exhibit base-rate neglect in decision-making tasks when given extensive prior experience with specific cues. This suggests learned information can override optimal judgment in both species.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Animal Behavior
  • Decision Making

Background:

  • Humans often neglect base-rate information in decision-making, a phenomenon known as base-rate neglect.
  • Pigeons have previously demonstrated optimal decision-making by appropriately weighting base-rate and case-cue information in similar tasks.
  • Prior experience and learned rules can interfere with optimal decision-making in humans.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether pigeons also exhibit base-rate neglect under specific training conditions.
  • To determine if extensive pretraining with informative case cues influences pigeons' weighting of base-rate information.
  • To explore the role of learned experience in decision-making biases across species.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments were conducted using pigeons.

Related Experiment Videos

  • A matching-to-sample procedure was employed, designed to simulate the classic base-rate problem.
  • Pigeons received extensive pretraining with informative case cues before the main task.

    • Main Results:

    • Pigeons displayed base-rate neglect after undergoing extensive pretraining with the matching task.
    • The results indicate that pigeons, similar to humans, can be induced to neglect base-rate information.
    • Extensive exposure to case-specific cues appears to override the pigeons' ability to utilize base-rate information optimally.

    Conclusions:

    • Pigeons can exhibit base-rate neglect, challenging previous findings of their consistent optimal decision-making.
    • Extensive pretraining with case cues can lead to suboptimal decision-making in pigeons, mirroring human biases.
    • Learned experience plays a critical role in shaping decision-making strategies and can induce biases in non-human animals.