The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between hunger drive level and the slope of colour light stimulus generalization gradients and to determine the optimal hunger deprivation level for the operant conditioning technique for chicks.
Throughout the entire experiment, subjects were classified into seven groups according to their feeding time : 30 min. (30M), 1 hour (1H), 2hours (2H), 4 hours (4H), free feeding (Free Feed) in Exp. I and 3 hours (3H), 4 hours (4H) in Exp. II. 28 White Leghorn chicks were each fed freely for 14 days after hatching in an isolated cage, and were then assigned to the above groups.
During the simple training, deprived chicks were trained to peck at a translucent diffused key illuminated by a wavelength 520 nm in Exp. I and 590 nm in Exp. II respectively. After subjects began to respond to the key, they were given continuously reinforced sessions and then intermittently reinforced ones to obtain enough responses. Subsequently, they were placed on a VI schedule with the mean interval of 30 sec. for about 11 min. per day for 10 days in Exp. I and the mean interval of 35 sec. for about 14 min. per day for 11 days in Exp. II.
On the following two days they were tested individually for generalization in extinction situation using five different colour light stimuli : 460, 500, 520, 540 and 580 nm in Exp. I and 500, 530, 560, 590 and 630 nm in Exp. II, respectively. The order of presentation was governed by 5 × 5 latin squares.
It was shown in the results that the hunger deprivation level affected the slope of generalization gradient and that the optimal feeding level was that of 4H group.
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