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NCBI ROFL: Sorry Tommy, even this pigeon thinks your painting sucks

Discover how pigeons can discriminate good and bad paintings through operant conditioning techniques. Intriguing findings await!

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Pigeons can discriminate "good" and "bad" paintings by children

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"...adult human observers first classified several children's paintings as either "good" (beautiful) or "bad" (ugly). Using operant conditioning procedures, pigeons were then reinforced for pecking at "good" paintings. After the pigeons learned the discrimination task, they were presented with novel pictures of both "good" and "bad" children's paintings to test whether they had successfully learned to discriminate between these two stimulus categories."

Thanks to Ana for finding today's ROFL!

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