Choice reaction time in pigeons fails to increase as predicted by Hick’s law

Abstract

Being able to correctly identify a target when presented with multiple possible alternatives, or increasing uncertainty, is highly beneficial in a wide variety of situations. This has been intensely investigated with human participants and results consistently demonstrated that participant reaction time (RT) increases linearly with the number of response alternatives, described as Hick’s Law. Yet, the strength of this relationship is impacted by a variety of parameters, including stimulus-response compatibility, stimulus intensity, and practice. Different theories attempt to explain why these parameters affect the time to detect the target, but thus far these theories almost exclusively rely on human and nonhuman primate research. Therefore, it is unclear if these theories are universal or unique to primates, due to the scarcity of other animal models. A previous investigation showed that pigeon RT will increase in accordance with Hick’s Law though not as steeply as human RT, potentially due to differences in the procedure used on pigeons. To better understand pigeon RT under uncertainty and facilitate cross species comparisons, these experiments used a procedure that was more similar to what has been given to humans. Surprisingly, pigeon RT did not follow Hick’s Law as predicted. In Experiment 1, subjects showed an ‘anti-Hick’s’ effect due to an artefact of stimulus location on the monitor. Subsequent experiments controlled for location, still RT did not increase with the number of choices as predicted by Hick’s Law. Procedural changes that may have been responsible for this difference and the role of stimulus-response compatibility are discussed.