Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 7, 2026
06:14
A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons (Columba Livia)
Published on: September 7, 2018
Signalled and unsignalled free-operant avoidance in the pigeon
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
|May 1, 1970
Abstract:
Pigeons were trained to depress a lever to avoid electric shock under free-operant avoidance schedules without a warning signal, or with a warning signal that could be terminated only by a response. Most birds in the signalled avoidance procedure terminated more than 50% of the warning signals before shock. In the unsignalled avoidance procedure, several birds formed a temporal discrimination and received relatively few shocks; other birds responded only in post-shock bursts, and received many more shocks.
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