Abstract
The mechanisms underlying tracking and capture of moving objects in non-human animals are poorly understood. This set of experiments sought to further explore aspects of anticipatory tracking in pigeons and to conduct comparisons with human participants. In Experiment 1a, pigeons were presented with two types of varying velocities (fast-slow-fast or slow-fast-slow) in separate phases. They were readily able to track and anticipate both of these motion types. To examine the effects of predictability on anticipatory tracking, Experiment 1b presented the pigeons with the same two varying velocities randomly intermixed within a session. This resulted in reduced capture success, later capture, and errors that no longer anticipated ahead of the motion, suggesting that the anticipatory mechanism had been disrupted. This implies that the mechanisms involved in pigeon tracking are different from the predictive extrapolation mechanism proposed in humans. Experiment 2 tested this by presenting adult humans with a tracking task that was similar to tasks previously received by the pigeons. The capture behavior of humans was similar to the pigeons, but the errors revealed different processes underlying their tracking behavior.
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Acknowledgments
This research was conducted when both authors were at the University of York. It was supported in part by an Innovation and Research Pump Priming Fund grant from the University of York. Some of the research presented in this article formed a part of a PhD dissertation completed by Anna Wilkinson. She is currently at the University of Vienna. The human experiment formed a portion of an undergraduate project conducted by Angela York. Kimberly Kirkpatrick is currently at Kansas State University. The authors would like to thank Tim Chen for programming the experimental task in MATLAB. We would also like to thank Richard Wood and Stuart Morley for technical support and animal care.
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Wilkinson, A., Kirkpatrick, K. Tracking and capture of constant and varying velocity stimuli: a cross-species comparison of pigeons and humans. Anim Cogn 14, 59–71 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-010-0343-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-010-0343-8