Jessica Stagner

Jessica Stagner has been a member of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory since 2008. She received her Bachelor degree from the University of Kentucky in 2007, and will defend her master's thesis this spring. She started working in the lab as an undergraduate and was first interested in whether pigeons have episodic memories. Can they recall experiences when unexpectedly asked? Currently she is studying gambling-like behavior in pigeons. Animals are supposed to be sensitive to the overall probabilities of reinforcement but there is evidence that pigeons, like humans, will choose a low probability of a high payoff over a high probability of a low payoff even if, over trials, the low payoff provides more reinforcement. This result suggests that gambling may have a biological basis much like chemical addictions.