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Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior logoLink to Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
. 1993 Jul;60(1):203–217. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1993.60-203

Scaling pigeons' choice of feeds: bigger is better.

P R Killeen 1, H Cate 1, T Tran 1
PMCID: PMC1322155  PMID: 8354967

Abstract

Preferences of hungry pigeons among 10 grains and pellets were analyzed using a Thurstone scaling procedure. The recovered scales were positively correlated with size of the feed. The correlations improved when the Thurstonian assumption of equal-sized discriminal dispersions (Case V) was replaced with the assumption of proportional-sized dispersions (Case VI), as entailed by Weber's law. The correlations weakened when the experiments were conducted with the pigeons close to their free-feeding weights, where the probability of sampling alternative grains increased. In the final experiment, exposure to a large pellet shifted the preferences between two smaller pellets.

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Selected References

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