USING THE PEAK PROCEDURE TO MEASURE TIMING AND COUNTING-PROCESSES IN PIGEONS

In 4 experiments, it was shown that the peak procedure can be used to study timing and counting in pigeons. In Experiment 1, pigeons were tr ained to peck at a green key that briefly flashed red every second. Af ter training under a fixed interval 20 s/fixed number 20 flashes sched ule of reinforcement, time and number were dissociated on empty test t rials by varying the flash rate. The peak-time curves for different ha sh rates suggested that pigeons were using a strategy of responding to the first dimension, time or number, that crossed a threshold for ini tiating and terminating response. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that pige ons could be trained to time or count on empty trials by reinforcing r esponse to only time or number. It was found in Experiment 4 that the set to time or count transferred to a new fixed interval 30 s/fixed nu mber 30 flashes schedule of reinforcement.