Anticipating by pigeons depends on local statistical information in a serial response time task

Pigeons responded in a serial response time task patterned after that of M. J. Nissen and P. Bullemer (1987) with humans. Experiment 1 produced global facilitation: Response times in repeating lists of locations were faster than when locations were random. Response time to a spatial location was also a function of both that location’s 1st- and 2nd-order local predictability, in rough agreement with the HickHyman law, according to which response time is a linear function of amount of information. Experiment 2 showed that both local and global facilitation is limited to moderate response-to-stimulus intervals of about 0.50 to 2.00 s. Experiment 3 showed that response time did not depend on global statistical information. Overall, local and global performances depended on local statistical information, but global performance did not depend on global information. Local facilitation was interpreted in plain English as anticipating. Behavior depends on statistical information in the environment. Indeed, Estes (2002) noted that “there can be few cognitive activ-ities as pervasive and adaptive in ordinary life as assessing the probabilities of alternative outcomes ” (p. 8), and other researchers have suggested that adult humans, children, and infants may use similar statistical learning mechanisms (Hunt & Aslin, 2001, p. 661). One naturally wonders whether some nonhuman animals, which obviously also need to assess the probabilities of alternative outcomes, may use these same mechanisms. A task that is prominent in the clarification of human statistical learning mechanisms is the serial response time task. A recent cognitive and neurobiological discussion of serial response times noted that “the ability to produce and learn sequential actions is one of the hallmarks of human cognition. Indeed, this ability has been hypothesized to constitute a fundamental adaptation that characterizes what makes human cognition so extraordinary” (Keele, Ivry, Mayr, Hazeltine, & Heuer, 2003, p. 316). We think that the ability of many nonhuman animals to learn and produce sequential actions similarly makes animal cognition extraordinar