Uhm, I kind of felt the pigeon experiment was a little misleading.

Yes, the pigeons did a great job of switching doors and learning through LR.

Human RL however (seems to me) takes place in a more subtle manner. While the pigeons seemed to focus on a more object level prouctivity, human RL would seem to take up a more complicated route.

But even that's kind of besides the point.

In the article that Kaj had posted above, with the Amy Sutherland trying the LRS on her husband, it was an interesting point to note that the RL was happening at a rather unconscious level. In the monty hall problem solving type of cognition, the brain is working at a much more conscious active level.

So it seems more than likely to me that while LR works in humans, it gets easily over-ridden if you will by conscious deliberate action.

One other point is also worth noting in my opinion.

Human brains come with a lot more baggage than pigeon brains. Therefore, it is more than likely than humans have learnt not to switch through years of re-enforced learning. It makes it much harder to unlearn the same thing in a smaller period of time. The pigeons having lesser cognitive load may have a lot less to unlearn and may have made it easier for them to learn the switching pattern.