The Interrelation Between Pigeons’ Schedule-Induced Aggressive Behavior and the Recipients’ Counter-Behavior

The present experiment was conducted to investigate whether an experimental pigeon's shield-peck responses toward a target pigeon could be induced by a food reinforcement schedule consisting of continuous reinforcement (CRF) and extinction. Further, the interaction between experimental and target pigeons’ shield-peck responses was investigated. The experiment was an ABAB design consisting of alternating phases of nonreinforcement (A) and CRF-extinction (B) of the experimental pigeons' key-peck responses unrelated to their shield-peck responses. The experimental pigeons' shield-peck responses were induced by the CRF-extinction schedule. Further, there were positive correlations between the experimental and the target pigeons' shield-peck responses revealing a similar trend in both their response rates. Thus, the experimental pigeons’ shield-peck responses were controlled by variables including the reinforcement schedule and social stimuli including ontogenic and phylogenic variables derived from their target pigeons. Moreover, the pigeons' responses could be classified as an aggressive behavior derived from the interlocking contingencies of the responses of the pigeons of the dyads.