EXTENSIVE TRAINING IS INSUFFICIENT TO PRODUCE THE WORK‐ETHIC EFFECT IN PIGEONS

Abstract

Zentall and Singer (2007a) hypothesized that our failure to replicate the work‐ethic effect in pigeons (Vasconcelos, Urcuioli, & Lionello‐DeNolf, 2007) was due to insufficient overtraining following acquisition of the high‐ and low‐effort discriminations. We tested this hypothesis using the original work‐ethic procedure (Experiment 1) and one similar to that used with starlings (Experiment 2) by providing at least 60 overtraining sessions. Despite this extensive overtraining, neither experiment revealed a significant preference for stimuli obtained after high effort. Together with other findings, these data support our contention that pigeons do not reliably show a work‐ethic effect.