Term of Award
1994
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Psychology
Document Type and Release Option
Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)
Department
Department of Psychology
Committee Chair
Janice N. Steirn
Committee Member 1
Janice H. Kennedy
Committee Member 2
John D. Murray
Committee Member 3
Richard L. Rogers
Abstract
Two experiments investigated the underlying mechanisms in pigeons' transitive inference (TI) performance. These experiments examined TI performance in the absence o£ positive value transfer while allowing a linear arrangement of the stimuli. Experiment 1 presented pigeons with a five-element series (A+B-, B+C-, C+D-, D+E-), in which one group received 100% reinforcement for choices of A and the other group received 50% reinforcement for choices of A. Successful TI performance was not found in either group. Experiment 2 was conducted because it was suspected that the stimuli in Experiment 1 resulted in a circular array. Experiment 2 employed the same design but utilized stimuli that had been successful in a previous experiment; both groups demonstrated TI performance in test, with no difference between groups. Although these results support neither Value Transfer Theory (Fersen, Wynne, Delius, & Staddon, 1991) nor the reinforcement history hypothesis (Couvillion & Bitterman, 1992), they are consistent with a linear order explanation of TI.
Copyright
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Recommended Citation
Weaver, Janice Elaine, "An Examination of Mechanisms Underlying Performance on Transitive Inference Tasks by Pigeons: Linear Order Theory versus Value Transfer Theory" (1994). Legacy ETDs. 218.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd_legacy/218
