CLASSICAL-CONDITIONING OF JAW MOVEMENTS IN THE PIGEON - ACQUISITION AND RESPONSE TOPOGRAPHY

Previous studies have shown (1) that the form of the pigeon's conditio ned keypecking response resembles that of its ingestive pecking respon se, (2) that, both ingestive and conditioned pecking in the pigeon are compound responses, including both transport (neck-movement) and gape (jaw-movement) components, and (3) that during operant conditioning o r autoshaping of pecking behavior, the gape component comes under the associative control of the CS. In the present study, the gape componen t was experimentally isolated and a classical conditioning paradigm (w ater US) was used to bring jaw movements under the control of a CS (li ght). The results indicate that the topography of the jaw-movement CR is very similar to, though more variable than, that of the UR. They ar e consistent with the hypothesis that reported similarities in the for m of ingestive and conditioned pecking responses reflect, in part, cla ssical conditioning of the gape component.