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

Gibson, Brett M.; Wasserman, Edward A.

doi:10.3758/bf03196019

Cited by 14 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…In the future it will be interesting to determine whether the capacity exists for S/D discrimination and concept learning in other modalities in chickadees. In pigeons that depend more on the visual domain, compared to the auditory domain, not only have visual S/D relations been shown readily, but the birds learn relational rules to categorize stimuli where either absolute or relational rules could be used [55]–[57]. Thus, the use of relational over absolute strategies may be domain-specific or may be more difficult to achieve outside the primary domain of a given species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is generally thought to be because songbirds use absolute pitch rather than relative pitch to classify auditory stimuli [13], although there appear to be exceptions especially when the birds are attending to conspecific vocal cues (e.g., [17], [31], [67]). Because the experiment could not have been solved using absolute pitch alone, but absolute pitch appears to have played a role in their response to the novel pitch probes, the chickadees were likely coding both absolute and relational aspects of the stimuli as pigeons appear to have done in former S/D experiments [20], [55]–[57].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Auditory Same/Different Concept Learning and Generalization in Black-Capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)

et al. 2012

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concept learning was thought to be uniquely human, but has since been observed in many other species. Discriminating same from different is one abstract relation that has been studied frequently. In the current experiment, using operant conditioning, we tested whether black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) could discriminate sets of auditory stimuli based on whether all the sounds within a sequence were the same or different from one another. The chickadees were successful at solving this same/different relational task, and transferred their learning to same/different sequences involving novel combinations of training notes and novel notes within the range of pitches experienced during training. The chickadees showed limited transfer to pitches that was not used in training, suggesting that the processing of absolute pitch may constrain their relational performance. Our results indicate, for the first time, that black-capped chickadees readily form relational auditory same and different categories, adding to the list of perceptual, behavioural, and cognitive abilities that make this species an important comparative model for human language and cognition.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory Same/Different Concept Learning and Generalization in Black-Capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)

et al. 2012

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“…However, BRIDGES makes a testable prediction different from the variability model; the responses in a same-different task should not just be based on the sameness and differentness of the array but also on the featural similarity between the test array and previous arrays the animal has been trained with, because some attention should still be on the features. Gibson and Wasserman ( 2004 ) provide just such a test and confirm BRIDGE's prediction.…”

Section: Inputmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…In Gibson and Wasserman ( 2004 ), pigeons are trained on stimuli consisting of arrays of 16 icons drawn from one of two sets of icons, a and b . Same arrays always contain 16 identical a icons, whereas different arrays always contain different arrangements of the 16 unique b icons.…”

Section: Inputmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanistic models of associative and rule-based category learning

Love¹,

Tomlinson

2010

The Making of Human Concepts

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Chapter 4, 'Mechanistic models of associative and rule-based category learning', reviews some of the computational models that have been used to simulate the different forms of concept learning that were introduced in Chapters 2 and 3. One class of models has been designed to capture our ability to learn rule-based categories that have defining features. Such models are well suited to learn concepts such as triangle in which all members have three sides, angles that add to 180°, and form a closed figure. With rule-based concepts, membership is all or none, meaning that as long as an object has the criterial features of a triangle, it is a triangle, and no triangle is any better example of a triangle than any other triangle. A difficulty with category-learning models that can just learn rules is that many categories do not seem to be rule based. For example, one might try to define the concept of bird with features such as, has feathers, can fly, and lays eggs, but exceptions can be found (i.e. baby male ostriches are birds, but they do not (1) have feathers, (2) fly, or (3) lay eggs). In a more famous example, the philosopher Wittgenstein argued that a concept such as game has no attribute shared by virtually all of its members. Rather, members of a category bear a relationship of family resemblance where there is a cluster of attributes that characterizes the family, but hardly any attribute would hold for all members of the family. Categories with a family-resemblance structure are learned well by models that represent prototypes. A prototype can be thought of as the central tendency of a category or as the best representative of a family in the sense of having the greatest number of attributes in common with other members of the category and the fewest number of attributes in common with members of contrast categories. Models that represent categories as prototypes can account for typicality effects in which category membership is graded with some members

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“…The pigeon would be thinking “red” (a perceptual judgment). The tradeoff between the perceptual and relational levels of processing in matching tasks is crucial to the theoretical and empirical context of the present article (see also Gibson & Wasserman, 2003, 2004). This tradeoff also illuminates by contrast humans’ status as the premier abstract and analogical cognitive system, demonstrating that other cognitive organizations are possible and extant in phylogeny.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fading perceptual resemblance: A path for rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to conceptual matching?

et al. 2013

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Cognitive, comparative, and developmental psychologists have long been intrigued by humans’ and animals’ capacity to respond to abstract relations like sameness and difference, because this capacity may underlie crucial aspects of cognition like analogical reasoning. Recently, this capacity has been explored in higher-order, relational matching-to-sample (RMTS) tasks in which humans and animals try to complete analogies of sameness and difference between disparate groups of items. The authors introduced a new paradigm to this area, by yoking the relational-matching cue to a perceptual-matching cue. Then, using established algorithms for shape distortion, the perceptual cue was weakened and eliminated. Humans’ RMTS performance easily transcended the elimination of perceptual support. In contrast, RMTS performance by six macaques faltered as they were weaned from perceptual support. No macaque showed evidence of mature RMTS performance, even given more than 260,000 training trials during which we tried to coax a relational-matching performance from them. It is an important species difference that macaques show so hesitant a response to conceptual relations when humans respond to them so effortlessly. It raises theoretical questions about the emergence of this crucial capacity during humans’ cognitive evolution and during humans’ cognitive development.

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

Cited by 14 publications

References 21 publications

Auditory Same/Different Concept Learning and Generalization in Black-Capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)

Auditory Same/Different Concept Learning and Generalization in Black-Capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)

Mechanistic models of associative and rule-based category learning

Fading perceptual resemblance: A path for rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to conceptual matching?

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