Previous sexual conditioning studies with male Japanese quail have shown that adding taxidermic female head and neck cues to a conditioned stimulus (CS) facilitates conditioned sexual responding. The present experiment examined CS-US similarity as a possible mechanism for this facilitation. During sexual conditioning trials, artificially colored CSs with or without taxidermic female head cues were paired with copulatory access to artificially colored female quail (the unconditioned stimulus or US) to form similar and dissimilar CS-US combinations. As in previous experiments the presence of taxidermic female cues on the CS enhanced conditioned copulatory responding. Additionally, more conditioned copulatory responding developed when the CS and US colors were similar compared to when they were different. The results indicate that similarity between the CS and US strengthens the sexual conditioning of male quail, and similarity in color is more important than similarity in shape. The results also suggest that CS-US similarity may be one factor responsible for the facilitated conditioned responding that occurs when female cues are added to a CS object. The behavior systems approach is used to interpret the findings.

The traditional learning view involves the general process theory of learning that focuses onidentifying universal principles that apply to all species capable of learning from experience, and that operate across a wide variety of situations.  Examples of behavior that contradictgeneral-process conceptions of learning have been in the past referred to as “biologicalconstraints”. Traditional learning theorists choose to consider these examplesas exceptions to otherwise universal principles of learning. On the contrary, thetypical ethologist is more likely to be concerned with how specific behaviorsmay have evolved and in an animal’s species typical responses to stimuli theyare likely to encounter in their natural environment.  However, they also fail to embrace animallearning phenomena that occurs in the laboratory into their theoreticalframework.  Behavior systems represent analternative to this view by providing a link between traditional views oflearning and ethology.  Theyconceptualize experiential learning not as a set of universal principles, butas species typical processes that reflect the specific demands of the ecological niche in which the species evolved. The current paper reviews andbrings-to-date Domjan’s formulation of a sexual behavior system in maleJapanese quail.  The system includes astimulus dimension consisting of species typical cues, local cues, andcontextual cues, and a response dimension consisting of general search, focalsearch, and copulatory behavior.  Domjan’sformulation includes two diagrams that include symbols that representunconditioned and conditioned effects within the system.  Our modification of the system focuses onadditional and up-to-date conditioned effects. In general, adding conditioning to the system increases potentialstimulus and response variation, thereby increasing the flexibility of thesystem as it has evolved as a result of continued observation andexperimentation.

Individual recognition is a complex social learning process in which idiosyncratic characteristics of a conspecific are learned and later used to discriminate this conspecific from others. Many social species of birds appear to be capable of individual recognition. However, it is possible that at least under some circumstances these and other species discriminate conspecifics not based on individual recognition but instead, by recognizing them as members of one or more social categories. Many references to individual recognition in the literature have neglected to address this distinction. For example, Riters and Balthazart (1998) reported that male quail were capable of recognizing individual females with which they had and had not copulated, but their experimental design may have unintentionally created two social categories of females (sexually receptive and non-receptive). The present set of experiments replicated Riters’ and Balthazart’s findings (Experiment 1) and then tested male quail for their ability to recognize females based on physical cues only (Experiment 2), physical and behavioral cues (Experiment 3), and the social categorization cues associated with female receptivity (Experiment 4). The results suggested that male quail are capable of recognizing individual females with which they have and have not copulated, but this recognition is not based onphysical, non-sexual, or sexual receptivity behaviors in isolation. Instead, individual recognition occurred only when the males were able to utilize all of these potentially distinctive female attributes in combination. The results also suggested that female receptivity responses may be unique and idiosyncratic, varying along one or more dimensions.