The Harvard Pigeon Lab under Herrnstein

The history of the Harvard Pigeon Lab is a history of two periods of remarkable productivity, the first under Skinner's leadership and the second under Herrnstein's. In each period, graduate students flocked to the leader and then began stimulating one another. Chance favored Herrnstein's leadership, too, because an unusually large number of graduate students were admitted in the fall of 1962. In each period, productivity declined as the leader lost interest in the laboratory and withdrew. Directly and indirectly, the laboratory finally died as a result of the cognitive "revolution." Skinner and his students saw the possibility of a natural science of behavior and set about establishing that science based on concepts such as response rate, stimulus control, and schedules of reinforcement. Herrnstein and his students saw that the science could be quantitative and set about making it so, with relative response rate, the matching law, and the psychophysics of choice (analogous to S. S. Stevens' psychophysics). The history might provide a golden research opportunity for someone interested in the impact of such self-organizing research groups on the progress of science.     

Between the waves: Harvard Pigeon Lab 1955-1960

Six or more graduate students were active in and around the Pigeon Lab in the spring of 1955 and also in 1960, but when I arrived it the fall of 1955 there were none. Looking back in 2001 at that period I can appreciate the unique opportunity for research that I had, as well as the exceptional and productive groups of graduate students who had recently finished their study and research and those who would carry on the tradition of excellence.     

The watershed years of 1958-1962 in the Harvard Pigeon Lab

During the years 1958-1962, the final years of support by the National Science Foundation for B. F. Skinner's Pigeon Lab in Memorial Hall at Harvard University, 20 or so pigeon experiments (plus some with other organisms) ran concurrently 7 days a week. The research style emphasized experimental analyses, exploratory procedures, and the parametric exploration of variables. This reminiscence describes some features of the laboratory, the context within which it operated, and the activities of some of those who participated in it.     

The living legacy of the Harvard Pigeon Lab: quantitative analysis in the wide world

From the Harvard Pigeon Lab of the 1960s arose a behavior-analytic approach that was quantitative and rigorous, rooted in Herrnstein's matching law. Researchers modified the matching law to describe choice behavior in a variety of different settings and examined its relations with other quantitative models. Beginning in the early 1970s, researchers began using the Harvard Pigeon Lab's quantitative framework to study in the laboratory specific aspects of the world outside the laboratory. Much of this work concerned investigations of self-control-choice of a larger, more delayed reinforcer over a smaller, less delayed reinforcer. Experiments using a quantitative framework derived from the matching law have also been conducted outside the laboratory; however, these have been far less frequent. Current and future researchers will benefit the field by devising new, creative ways to investigate the matching law and related quantitative models outside the laboratory. Such research can help to demonstrate the validity of these models as basic principles of behavior, can enhance public opinion of and rewards for such research, and can stimulate further development of the Harvard Pigeon Lab's quantitative approach by using that approach with new variables.     

Pigeon concept formation: successive and simultaneous acquisition

Pigeons were trained to discriminate the presence of one or more human forms in displays projected on a panel above the response key. This task was mastered, although imperfectly, with successive and with simultaneous presentations of positive and negative instances. The course of acquisition of the discrimination was similar for the two training procedures. Animals were able to transfer the discrimination from the successive to the simultaneous situation. Various tests were carried out to control for artifactual cues on which the discrimination might have been based. The discrimination was maintained when new displays were presented, when reinforcement was omitted, and when displays were inverted 180°. Animals were also able to discriminate between pairs of displays that were identical, except that one member of the pair contained a human form. The research extends the techniques used by Herrnstein and Loveland (1964), and confirms their finding that pigeons can master the concept of “person-present” in a visual display.     

Pigeon pattern perception: limits on perspective invariance

Two experiments are reported in which the response of pigeons to perspective transformations of a pattern target was measured. In the first experiment an alphabet letter was taken as the pattern target (the 'positive') and the response to its perspective transforms was compared to the response to nontarget letters ('negatives') over the course of discrimination training. In the second experiment irregular quadrilaterals were used as positives and the responses to slight perspective deformations of the prototypes were compared to the responses to random transformations of the same magnitude under steady-state conditions. The amount of differential responding depended on the type of transformation. There was no differential response to targets rotated in the picture plane or around the horizontal axis in either experiment. There was differential response to small reductions and enlargements of the target. There was also differential response to translated targets, and this was seen irrespective of the amount of displacement. Results from targets rotated around the vertical axis were erratic, some target-plus-angle combinations elicited differential responding, but most did not. The erratic responses are attributed to symmetries in pattern elements that were abstracted as critical features. Pigeons therefore exhibit no true rotation invariance, limited size invariance, and complete shift invariance. It is argued that size invariance, but not position invariance, may depend on prior exposure to the alternatives.     

Quantitative Analyses of Choice in Rat and Pigeon

The Psychological Record - Studies of choice in nonhuman animals that presented concurrent variable-interval variable-interval schedules of reinforcement were quantitatively reviewed. Empirical...     

环保且持续发展的家电未来——“2007年伊莱克斯设计实验室大赛”入围作品大展

在这个比创意比设计的竞争时代,所有跟设计有关的场面,都衍变成一场场有输有赢的游戏。而全世界都在用智慧的设计商机来角逐,让生活变得更加丰盛多彩。环保是全球最为关注的话题,我们怎样才能更好地爱护这个我们赖以生存的地球,使它能够更好地走可持续发晨的道路,这不仅仅是我们这一代人的眼下任务,也是为子孙后代造福的重大责任。2007年伊莱克斯设计实验室大赛(Electrolux Design Lab Competition)始创于2003年,当时还只是一个面向3个欧洲设计学校的竞赛,如今已经发展成为一个面向全球设计院校的学生,致力于为未来家电提供创新设想的国际比赛。2007年第5届伊莱克斯设计实验室大赛以为2020年的未来提供一种环保,可持续的家电解决方案为主题,吸引了数千名学生参加,最终入围者在2007年11月被邀请到法国巴黎对设计作品做最后陈述。本届大赛的最终获奖者获得5,000欧元奖金和伊莱克斯设计中心6个月的实习机会,冠亚季军分别被匈牙利、法国、中国的三位设计专业的学生获得。     

The Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics

The Rice Virtual Laboratory in Statistics is an integrated combination of an electronic textbook, simulations/demonstrations, and case studies. The electronic textbook covers basic concepts in statistics and data analysis and contains links to data analysis tools, instructional demonstrations/simulations, and other on-line texts. The simulations and demonstrations help make abstract concepts concrete and allow students to investigate various aspects of statistical tests and distributions. Case studies demonstrate the real-world applicability of statistical methods. Materials are available on the World-Wide Web.