Abstract
Forty food-deprived cockerel chicks were tested individually in a straight runway containing a familiar food cup that moved when the chicks moved. The food cup always moved in the same direction as the chick: For 20 experimental chicks it moved twice as far as the chick; for 20 control chicks it moved half as far. In Lewis Carroll’s (1898/1926) picturesque terminology, the experimental chicks were tested in Alice’s “room through the looking-glass,” in which, in order to approach the food cup, they had to “walk the other way.” Although the control chicks performed well, the experimental chicks evinced the runway behavior that characterizes positive feedback: They persistently chased the food cup away. This means that the spatial polarity of visual feedback is critical and implies that an ordinary approach response is but an automatic (closed-loop) realization of an intended visual perception.
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This paper reports research from the author’s doctoral dissertation, which was supported by Public Health Service Fellowship MF-13, 198 from the National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, and was conducted under the kind and able direction of the late Maurice P. Smith in the Department of Psychology at the University of Colorado.
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Hershberger, W.A. An approach through the looking-glass. Animal Learning & Behavior 14, 443–451 (1986). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03200092
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03200092