The distractor intensity is related to the rightward shift of the response rate distribution in a peak procedure in pigeons

The expected effect of interrupting the light that signals the to-be-estimated fixed Interval in a peak procedure is a shift rightward of the peak time. Nevertheless, it has not been studied the effect of inserting a distractor using a peak procedure in pigeons. In this experiment, two lights of different intensities were used as distractors (i.e., 10 and 50 luxes). They elapsed for 5 s, during a to-be-estimated interval of 30 s. It was observed an immediate decrease of the response rate as the distractor was inserted and a rightward shift of the response rate distribution, both related to the distractor intensity. Our results support other findings using different species and with different stimuli modalities,suggesting that rats, mice, and pigeons could share a common timing mechanism.