Abstract
Transitive inference (TI) has been studied in humans and several animals such as rats, pigeons and fishes. Using different methods for training premises it has been shown that a non-trained relation between stimuli can be stablished, so that if A > B > C > D > E, then B > D. Despite the widely reported cases of TI, the specific mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain under discussion. In the present experiment pigeons were trained in a TI procedure with four premises. After being exposed to all premises, the pigeons showed a consistent preference for B over D during the test. After overtraining C+D- alone, B was still preferred over D. However, the expected pattern of training performance (referred to as serial position effect) was distorted, whereas TI remained unaltered. The results are discussed regarding value transfer and reinforcement contingencies as possible mechanisms. We conclude that reinforcement contingencies can affect training performance without altering TI.
Highlights
In the context of animal behavior, transitive inference (TI) refers to the establishment of a relation between pairs of stimuli which have not been previously trained
The subject is exposed to pairs of stimuli named: A+B−, B+C−, C+D−, D+E− in a training phase, where letters represent stimuli, +means that the stimulus is followed by the delivery of a reinforcer, and − means that the stimulus was not followed by a reinforcer
To explore the effect of training and overtraining, we considered the average percentage of correct choices and latencies of response on each premise for the last two sessions of training (i.e., Phase 4) and overtraining (i.e., Phase 6)
Summary
In the context of animal behavior, transitive inference (TI) refers to the establishment of a relation between pairs of stimuli which have not been previously trained. The subject is exposed to pairs of stimuli named: A+B−, B+C−, C+D−, D+E− in a training phase, where letters represent stimuli, +means that the stimulus is followed by the delivery of a reinforcer, and − means that the stimulus was not followed by a reinforcer. After reaching over chance level of correct responses (usually more than 80% or 85%) on each pair of stimuli, the subject is exposed to non-adjacent pairs (BD, AC, AD, CE, BE, and AE) under extinction or non-differential reinforcement, which is called the test phase. The BD pair is regarded as the crucial pair, so that when the subject prefers B over D, TI is assumed. BD is regarded as the crucial pair of the so-called anchor effect. Because B and D were reinforced and non-reinforced, it is assumed that for solving BD TI is required
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