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-- Animals, too, have superstitions!

Animals, too, have superstitions!

Go figure!

"Skinner (B.F.) set up the feeding mechanism in the Skinner box to deliver a food pellet to a pigeon's feeding tray every 15 seconds regardless of the bird's behavior. He soon noticed that the feeding schedule led to the development of some peculiar behaviors. One pigeon kept bobbing its head up and down, while another spun around and around in a counterclockwise direction. Another kept flapping its wings. As Skinner explained it, these were the behaviors the pigeons happened to be performing when reinforcement was delivered to them. In other words, these useless behaviors were coincidentally reinforced. The birds acted as though it was the behavior - the bobbing, the spinning, and wing flapping - that brought about the food reward."

just as I thought. Animals are starting to get a higher level of consiousness. They will soon take over talk shows & instead of ricky Lake & Jerry Springer we will be seeing Daphy Dolphin & Irvin the Tiger discussing how to kick their cubs to the kerb biatch!

quote:

Originally posted by Xenocreator_PG_ just as I thought. Animals are starting to get a higher level of consiousness. They will soon take over talk shows & instead of ricky Lake & Jerry Springer we will be seeing Daphy Dolphin & Irvin the Tiger discussing how to kick their cubs to the kerb biatch!

That experiment, however, is from 1948.

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Originally posted by josh4 lol thats funny but while superstitions is a clever analogy to the meaning of the word it suggests the birds possess the level of intelligence to "believe" something like that. they don't. its all chemicals and stuff

However, the variety amongst some of the birds is intriguing...

Probably genes at work.

quote:

Originally posted by josh4 lol thats funny but while superstitions is a clever analogy to the meaning of the word it suggests the birds possess the level of intelligence to "believe" something like that. they don't. its all chemicals and stuff

Not exactly. Skinner was clever in that he titled this 1948 article that appeared in The Journal of Experiemntal Psychology 'Superstition' in the Pigeon. he purposely put the word superstition in quotes as to avoid any anthropomorphism. Kellogg also showed in 1949 that other animal species can exhibit such superstitions, like the dog, and orang-utang.


later on skinner was shown to be not entirely correct. He believed that an accidental pairing of being fed with any type of behavior caused a connection to form. Therefore that behavior which just so happened to occur at the time of feeding will have a highyer chance of occuring more frequently, and thereby be reinforced again, by accident. However Staddon and Simmelhag believed that there are only a few types of behavior that will occur when the pigeon is anticipating food.

Later animal experiments showed that a learned behavior like being reinforced for pecking a certain key, is reduced when it is put on a response independant schedule of reinforcement like skinner put his pigeons on. This is believed to occur because of the more frequent reinforcement of other behaviors. However the detail of that have been left alone for some time.





yea, I am basing my masters thesis on an experiment almost exactly like this one, except with humans. I am also completing a project to see how this one Skinner article has been cited in a wide variety of literature. this is mah shit, and I could go on for days on it.



why did you bring up this article anyways?

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Originally posted by Boomer187 why did you bring up this article anyways?

Studying for my psych test.

quote:

Originally posted by josh4 lol thats funny but while superstitions is a clever analogy to the meaning of the word it suggests the birds possess the level of intelligence to "believe" something like that. they don't. its all chemicals and stuff

techincally everything is 'chemicals and stuff', every thought/emotion we have is due to chemical reactions.

Yan, are you majoring in psychology or in a related area?

i have an exam on this in a few hours.
what the experiment did was exploit Thorndike's Law of Effect, that rewarding behaviour is likely to reoccur.

damn

quote:

Originally posted by josh4 lol thats funny but while superstitions is a clever analogy to the meaning of the word it suggests the birds possess the level of intelligence to "believe" something like that. they don't. its all chemicals and stuff

conditioning. the ability to associate two events. learning. and all that good stuff.

so how'd you do?

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