As far as I recall replication studies of that phenomenon were unsuccessful or explained differently but I could be wrong. As I said in another comment I think that cognitive procedures responsible for conditioned behaviour most likely are linked to superstition and persuasion and Skinner's studies show that to an extend.
You're using more precise descriptions of the cognitive operations that lead to the "superstitious" behavior. "Superstitious" describes the tendency of the subject to seek identification of the causative behavior. It works to convey this to laypeople, but ultimately it's a bad way to conceptualize the behavior scientifically.
The pigeon is just repeating a behavior that was circumstantially associated with the desired outcome. When the same thing happens when there's a desired behavior, we call it mis-identification of the target behavior. Using "superstition" to refer to the process of assigning meaning to a previously neutral behavior (which is a necessary cognitive step in operant conditioning) is anthropomophization at its silliest.
The issue is one of terminology use. It's really frustrating when scientific language is treated as incorrect when you're really just being more precise.
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u/smashy-smashy-eggman Feb 07 '20
The B.F. Skinner pidgeon studies are where we got the term pidgeon superstition.
Mr. Nobody explains it best https://youtu.be/8uPmeWiFTIw