Abstract
Chickadees are high-metabolism, non-migratory birds, and thus an especially interesting model for studying how animals follow patterns of food availability over time. Here, we studied whether black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) could learn to reverse their behavior and/or to anticipate changes in reinforcement when the reinforcer contingencies for each stimulus were not stably fixed in time. In Experiment 1, we examined the responses of chickadees on an auditory go/no-go task, with constant reversals in reinforcement contingencies every 120 trials across daily testing intervals. Chickadees did not produce above-chance discrimination; however, when trained with a procedure that only reversed after successful discrimination, chickadees were able to discriminate and reverse their behavior successfully. In Experiment 2, we examined the responses of chickadees when reversals were structured to occur at the same time once per day, and chickadees were again able to discriminate and reverse their behavior over time, though they showed no reliable evidence of reversal anticipation. The frequency of reversals throughout the day thus appears to be an important determinant for these animals’ performance in reversal procedures.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant and Discovery Accelerator Supplement to CB Sturdy. We thank Joshua Yong and Erica Cheung for assistance in running subjects, and Tad Plesowicz for animal care.
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This research was conducted with the approval of the University of Alberta Research Ethics Office, meeting the standards of the Canadian Council on Animal Care. Chickadees were captured under permits granted by the Canadian Wildlife Service, Alberta Environment and Parks, and City of Edmonton Partners in Parks.
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McMillan, N., Hahn, A.H., Congdon, J.V. et al. Chickadees discriminate contingency reversals presented consistently, but not frequently. Anim Cogn 20, 655–663 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1088-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1088-4