Three Different Types Of Pigeons

I have selected to focus on the identification of positive and negative instances as the concept that I struggle to understand the most. The specific question that I missed regarding this concept was question 27 which described a situation that took place in a college humanities class. In this question, students were learning the three different types of columns that can be found in Greek architecture. A student working with a tutor, misidentified a picture of a column and the tutor corrected him. Tutoring like this continues until the students can successfully tell the difference between the three different types of columns. The question asks what learning process this situation best describes and the correct answer is the identification …show more content…
The researchers that conducted with study sought to provide evidence that learning is not done solely through the the association of relevant information and concepts, but that individuals must also be able to determine what information and concepts are irrelevant. Pigeons were used in this experiment where they learned associations between 16 different objects and their pexigrams, which were unique visual tokens that go with the object. Learning was conducted by presenting two pexigrams, one correct and one incorrect. The pigeons were trained in operant conditioning boxes and pexigrams were presented on using LCD monitors. During the training trials, the pigeons were presented with an image of the object and then the correct and incorrect pexigram. If the pigeon selected the correct pexigram, by pecking the image, food was dispensed. During the testing trials, the pigeons were presented with the object and then the correct pexigram and a pexigram from an untrained category. This was done to minimizing negative learning. Researchers conducted another set of training trials and followed up with testing trials before concluding the experiment. The results of this experiment demonstrated that learning can be achieved through negative associations. When the pigeons were given …show more content…
I felt like this article was relevant because it feedback is such an important piece in the learning process and it plays a major role in the scenario from the question that I missed. For the study that was conducted in this article, there were fifty volunteers that included adults, early adolescents and children. Only of the participants took the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test to determine their standard intelligence score. The participants completed a simple rule selection and application task where they had to use positive and negative feedback to select and apply the correct rule for a target stimulus. Just like the study conducted above by Roembke, Wasserman, & McMurray, the stimuli were always presented in pairs so that participant had to select the correct picture. During the trials the participants received feedback based on their selections. The results gathered from this study were consistent with other studies done covering this same topic. They found that all of the participants performed more accurately and faster on trials after they received positive feedback rather than negative feedback. The child age group demonstrated a more difficult time learning from negative feedback than the adult participants. These results show that with continued development