Detection of the velocity of movement of visual stimuli by pigeons?

Abstract

Nine pigeons were trained to discriminate a moving stimulus from a stationary stimulus. In one experiment, the stimulus was a rotating disc with radial stripes. In a second experiment, the stimulus was a vertically moving film strip with horizontal bars. Several psychophysical procedures were used to determine the minimal detectable velocity of movement. The detection thresholds for most of the pigeons fell in the range of 4.4 to 6.5 millimeters per second, corresponding to a retinal velocity of 4.1 to 6.01 degrees per second. A signal detection analysis of the psychophysical data indicated systematic changes in response bias that were related to the ordinal position of the stimulus velocity in the sequence.