Long-term associative memory in pigeons

Cook, Robert G.; Levison, Deborah; Parkison, Valerie; Blaisdell, Aaron P.

doi:10.1037/e537102012-172

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Nevertheless, the pigeons did accurately discriminate among the 160 S+ and 160 S-slides after only a few exposures to each. More recent research by Cook, Blaisdell, Levison, and Gillette (2001) has discovered that pigeons are able to discriminate and remember more than 1,000 such arbitrary images.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Pigeons learn stimulus identity and stimulus relations when both serve as redundant, relevant cues during same-different discrimination training.

Gibson¹,

Wasserman²

2003

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The authors taught pigeons to discriminate displays of 16 identical items from displays of 16 nonidentical items. Unlike most same-different discrimination studies--where only stimulus relations could serve a discriminative function--both the identity of the items and the relations among the items were discriminative features of the displays. The pigeons learned about both stimulus identity and stimulus relations when these 2 sources of information served as redundant, relevant cues. In tests of associative competition, identity cues exerted greater stimulus control than relational cues. These results suggest that the pigeon can respond to both specific stimuli and general relations in the environment.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Pigeons learn stimulus identity and stimulus relations when both serve as redundant, relevant cues during same-different discrimination training.

Gibson¹,

Wasserman²

2003

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Once this feature extraction algorithm has been established, discrimination decisions are made quickly (perhaps on a threshold basis). In contrast, pigeons are also able to commit to memory a vast quantity of pictorial information on the basis of the idiosyncratic properties of stimuli (Cook, Blaisdell, Levison, & Gilette, 2001; Vaughan & Greene, 1984; von Fersen & Delius, 1989). Discrimination is then accomplished by the comparison of a novel stimulus with the known exemplars of the category.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Learning Paradigm Elicits Fast Visual Discrimination in Pigeons.

Huber

Apfalter

Steurer

et al. 2005

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The authors describe a novel multistimulus, multiple-matching learning paradigm for pigeons, which they believe not only simulates pigeons' natural foraging behavior but also more realistically shows their visual discrimination ability. A touch screen thin film transistor panel shows a stimulus configuration consisting of a 2-dimensional array of bitmap images that changes from trial to trial. The pigeon's task during each trial is to peck at images that are defined as positive by the experimenter. An experiment exploring the ability of pigeons to discriminate between achromatic male and female human faces demonstrated the effectiveness of the procedure. In contrast to 12 pigeons that show little improvement over 60 hr of go/no-go discrimination training, 14 multiple-matching pigeons mastered the problem within a few hours.

show abstract

Time-course of control by specific stimulus features and relational cues during same-different discrimination training

Gibson

Wasserman

2004

Learning & Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We trained 7 pigeons to discriminate visual displays of 16 same items from displays of 16 different items. The specific stimulus features of the items and the relations among the items could serve as discriminative stimuli. Unlike in most studies of same-different discrimination behavior, we gave a small number of probe tests during each session of acquisition to measure the time-course of control by the learning of specific stimulus features and relational cues. Both the specific stimulus features and relational cues exerted reliable stimulus control, with the specific stimulus features exerting more control during the final three fourths of same-different learning. These findings replicate research suggesting that pigeons encode both the specific stimulus features and relational cues, and for the first time document the time-course of control by each kind of cue.

show abstract

Long-term associative memory in pigeons

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Pigeons learn stimulus identity and stimulus relations when both serve as redundant, relevant cues during same-different discrimination training.

Pigeons learn stimulus identity and stimulus relations when both serve as redundant, relevant cues during same-different discrimination training.

A New Learning Paradigm Elicits Fast Visual Discrimination in Pigeons.

Time-course of control by specific stimulus features and relational cues during same-different discrimination training

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About