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Updated: Aug 13, 2026

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons (Columba Livia)
Published on: September 7, 2018
Looking for inhibition of return in pigeons
Brett M Gibson1, Igor Juricevic, Sara J Shettleworth
1University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. bgibson@cisunix.unh.edu
Abstract:
We conducted four experiments in order to investigate whether pigeons' responses to a recently attended (i.e., recently pecked) location are inhibited. In Experiments 1 and 2, stimulus displays were similar to those used in studies of inhibition of return (IOR) with humans; responses to cued targets tended to be facilitated rather than inhibited. In Experiments 3 and 4, birds were presented with stimulus displays that mimicked clusters of small grains and were relatively localized, which should have been more appropriate for detecting IOR in pigeons. The results from these experiments again provided evidence for facilitation of responding to cued targets, rather than for IOR.

