A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons (Columba Livia)

Summary

Change blindness is a phenomenon of visual attention, whereby changes to a visual display go unnoticed under certain specific circumstances. This protocol describes a variation on the flicker paradigm for investigating change blindness that is appropriate and effective for research with pigeons.

Abstract

Change blindness is a phenomenon of visual attention, whereby changes to a visual display go unnoticed under certain specific circumstances. While many laboratory procedures have been developed that produce change blindness in humans, the flicker paradigm has emerged as a particularly effective method. In the flicker paradigm, two visual displays are presented in alternation with one another. If successive displays are separated by a short inter-stimulus interval (ISI), change detection is impaired. The simplicity of the procedure and the clear, performance-based operational definition of change blindness make the flicker paradigm well-suited to comparative research using nonhuman animals. Indeed, a variant has been developed that can be implemented in operant chambers to study change blindness in pigeons. Results indicate that pigeons, like humans, are worse at detecting the location of a change if two consecutive displays are separated in time by a blank ISI. Furthermore, pigeons' change detection is consistent with an active, location-by-location search process that requires selective attention. The flicker task thus has the potential to contribute to investigations of the dynamics of pigeons' selective spatial attention in comparison to humans. It also illustrates that the phenomenon of change blindness is not exclusive to humans' visual perception, but may instead be a general consequence of selective attention. Finally, while the useful aspects of attention are widely appreciated and understood, it is also important to acknowledge that they may be accompanied by specific imperfections such as change blindness, and that these imperfections have consequences across a wide range of contexts.

Introduction

Cognitive psychology has repeatedly demonstrated striking and often surprising imperfections in our own cognitive processes. Some of the more notable examples include but are not limited to false memories¹, suboptimal decision heuristics², and faulty statistical reasoning³. A more recent addition to this list is the phenomenon of change blindness. Change blindness is a consistent failure of attention, in which one fails to notice even prominent changes to one's environment. In one demonstration⁴, experimenters had a confederate approach individuals to request directions....

Protocol

The procedure described here is in accordance with the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare and with US Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and was approved by Whitman College's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

1. Reduce Pigeons' Weights

NOTE: Pigeons' weights are reduced to 80 - 85% of their free-feeding weight³³ to ensure that the birds are healthy and adequately motivated to work for food.

1. House naïve birds in individual cages with unlimited access to water, grit, and food.
2. Weigh each pigeon at....

Results

The primary result of interest is the difference in accuracy between trials with and without an ISI. In particular, the operational definition of change blindness in the flicker paradigm is significantly reduced change-detection accuracy on trials with an ISI relative to trials without an ISI. This effect can be seen in Figure 3, which shows previously published data²⁹. In that experiment, pigeons detected changes to stimuli consisting.......

Discussion

The method presented here is inspired by the so-called "flicker paradigm" commonly used by cognitive psychologists to study change blindness in humans⁹. In this human research, change blindness is operationally defined as the impairment in change detection produced by the presence of an ISI that interrupts transitions between stimulus displays. The same is true for the pigeon implementation described here. Furthermore, humans tend to approach the flicker task using a serial search strategy.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Small Environment Cublicle	BRS/LVE	SEC-002
Pigeon Intelligence Panel	BRS/LVE	PIP-016
Grain Feeder	BRS/LVE	GFM-001
Pigeon Pecking Key	BRS/LVE	PPK-001
Stimulus projector	BRS/LVE	IC-901
LED Lamp	Martek Industries, Cherry Hill NJ	1820
I/O module	Acces IO	USB-IDIO-8
Personal Computer	Dell	Optiplex 3040
Visual C++	Microsoft
White Carneau pigeons	Double-T Farm