Pigeons proficiently switch among four tasks without cost.

Abstract

Both humans and pigeons are highly adept at task switching. However, unlike humans, pigeons do not show measurable switch costs: decreased accuracy and/or increased response times when required to switch tasks on successive trials. This striking disparity suggests that humans and pigeons may succeed at task switching via different means: humans may rely on a combination of executive control and associative learning, whereas pigeons may rely solely on associative learning. Here, we further explored the limits of pigeons' associative learning in an expanded task-switching paradigm. We trained pigeons to switch among four tasks, each signaled by two redundant types of task cues. The pigeons benefited from the availability of both task cues despite their redundancy: their accuracies were higher when both cues were available than when only a single cue was available. Additionally, we assessed the possibility that the lack of switch costs reported in the pigeon literature might stem from methodological discrepancies between pigeon and human task-switching paradigms. Across experimental phases, we modified pigeons' trial structures to more closely mimic those typically used in human task-switching research. Despite these modifications, pigeons did not display switch costs, consistent with their sole reliance on associative learning. Overall, our data highlight the power and flexibility inherent in the pigeon's associative learning system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).