Transfer of visual identity matching-to-sample in two california sea lions (zalophus californianus)

Kastak, David; Schusterman, Ronald J.

doi:10.3758/bf03209162

Cited by 84 publications

(90 citation statements)

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“…Unlike Rio, Rocky had extensive training in an artificial gestural language (see Gisiner & Schusterman, 1992;Schusterman & Krieger, 1984). Like Rio, she was tested in identity and arbitrary matching tasks, and although she demonstrated generalized identity matching in the context of MTS (D. Kastak & Schusterman, 1994), she did not demonstrate equivalence, including emergent symmetry, when tested with the same procedure (unpublished data). Both subjects showed similar results in their most recent experiment, which documented the development of 10-member functional classes that also comprised equivalence classes (C. R. Kastak et al, 2001).…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rio had previously demonstrated generalized identity matching (D. Kastak & Schusterman, 1994) and had participated in a variety of arbitrary matching tasks (see Schusterman, Kastak, & Kastak, 2002). She had passed tests for stimulus equivalence by showing emergent transitive and symmetrical relations (Schusterman & Kastak, 1993) and had transferred those equivalence classes from MTS to sequential simple discriminations (Schusterman & Kastak, 1998).…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions trained in artificial language tasks were shown to immediately relate novel gestural signs to ''unnamed'' (novel) objects in the presence of familiar items (Herman, Richards, & Wolz, 1984;Schusterman & Krie-ger, 1984). In conditional discrimination procedures involving arbitrary or identity matching, California sea lions and harbor seals errorlessly matched novel visual samples and comparisons when the alternative was a member of an established stimulus pairing (Hanggi & Schusterman, 1995;D. Kastak & Schusterman, 1994;Pack, Herman, & Roitblat, 1991;Schusterman, Gisiner, Grimm, & Hanggi, 1993).…”

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Sea Lions and Equivalence: Expanding Classes by Exclusion

Kastak

Schusterman

2002

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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Experiments have shown that human and nonhuman subjects are capable of performing new arbitrary stimulus-stimulus relations without error. When subjects that are experienced with matchingto-sample procedures are presented with a novel sample, a novel comparison, and a familiar comparison, most respond by correctly selecting the novel comparison in the presence of the new sample. This exclusion paradigm was expanded with two California sea lions that had previously formed two 10-member equivalence classes in a matching-to-sample procedure. Rather than being presented with a novel sample on a given trial, the sea lions were presented with a randomly selected familiar member of one class as the sample. One of the comparisons was a randomly selected familiar member of the alternative class, and the other was a novel stimulus. When required to choose which comparison matched the sample, the subjects reliably rejected the familiar comparison, and instead selected the unfamiliar one. Next, the sea lions were presented with transfer problems that could not be solved by exclusion; they immediately grouped the new stimuli into the appropriate classes. These findings show that exclusion procedures can rapidly generate new stimulus relations that can be used to expand stimulus classes.Key words: exclusion, fast mapping, equivalence, symmetry, differential outcomes, class-specific reinforcement, California sea lionsIn the context of human language learning (semantics), appropriate responding can be facilitated by presenting new problems in the context of familiar alternatives. For example, if a child is asked ''Which one is the pafe?'' he or she may examine an array of familiar, already named objects and then select the novel item. This phenomenon, called fast mapping, linguistic inference, or the disambiguation effect in the field of psycholinguistics, is central to the development of language. In behavior analysis and animal cognition, this type of errorless performance is known as exResearch was supported by ONR Grant N00014-99-1064 to R. J. Schusterman. A DoD AASERT Fellowship and a GAANN Fellowship provided funding for C. R. Kastak. A portion of this manuscript was presented as an invited talk to the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, August 2001. We thank Tom Zentall for constructive comments during the preparation of this article. We greatly appreciate the encouragement given to us by David Kastak throughout the experiment, and we are particularly thankful to him for his insights during the preparation of the final manuscript. We also thank the dedicated research team at the Pinniped Cognition and Sensory Systems Laboratory, especially Kirsten Jensen and Shannon Spillman.Correspondence and reprint requests may be addressed to either author at Long Marine Laboratory, University of California at Santa Cruz, 100 Shaffer Road, Santa Cruz, California 95060 (e-mail: coll@cats.ucsc.edu or rjschust@cats.ucsc.edu).clusion or emergent matching (Wilkinson, Dube, & McIlvane, 1998). Dixon (1977) coined the term e...

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Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Sea Lions and Equivalence: Expanding Classes by Exclusion

Kastak

Schusterman

2002

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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“…The MTS task can be learned by many species including capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella and Cebus apella apella), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), dolphins (Tursiops truncates), humans (Homo sapiens), orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), pigeons (Columba livia), rats (Rattus norvegicus), rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), and sea lions (Zalophus californians) (e.g., Herman, Hovancik, Gory, & Bradshaw, 1989;Kastak & Schusterman, 1994;Oden, Thompson, & Premack, 1988;Pena, Pitts, Galizio, 2006;Robinson, 1955;Weinstein, 1941;Wright, 1997). Discovering which of these modes of learning (i.e., strategies) and what factors influence which strategy will control performance in monkeys and pigeons is an objective of our research.…”

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Learning strategies in matching to sample: If-then and configural learning by pigeons

Katz¹,

Bodily²,

Wright³

2008

Behavioural Processes

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Pigeons learned a matching-to-sample task with a split training-set design in which half of the stimulus displays were untrained and tested following acquisition. Transfer to the untrained displays along with no novel-stimulus transfer indicated that these pigeons learned the task (partially) via ifthen rules. Comparisons to other performance measures indicated that they also partially learned the task via configural learning (learning the gestalt of the whole stimulus display). Differences in the FR-sample requirement (1 vs. 20) had no systematic effect on the type of learning or level of learning obtained. Differences from a previous study (Wright, 1997) are discussed, including the effect of displaying the stimuli vertically (traditional display orientation) or horizontally from the floor.Tasks that can be learned by using different strategies have been a focus for psychology. Developing procedures to assess which strategies are learned has challenged the ingenuity of psychology researchers. One might even suggest that the success of comparative cognition depends on such developments to assess our models and theories (Roitblat & Weisman, 1986). The matching-to-sample (MTS) task is a procedure that can be solved by different strategies, either relational or item-specific strategies (e.g., Carter & Warner, 1978;Cumming & Berryman, 1965;Katz, Wright, & Bodily, 2007;Mackintosh, 2000; Roberts, 1998, p92;Urcuioli & Nevin, 1975;Wright, 1997;Zentall, Edwards, Moore, & Hogan, 1981).In typical MTS tasks, the subject is first presented with a sample item (e.g., red). After an observing response to the sample, two comparison stimuli (e.g., red and blue) are typically presented. The correct response is to select the comparison stimulus (red) that matches the sample. If the subject learns the MTS task relationally (i.e., relating each comparison stimulus to the sample stimulus), then this relational learning can provide the basis for abstract-concept learning. To test for abstract-concept learning (and relational learning) the subject is tested with novel stimuli. If the subject has learned the abstract concept, it should match novel stimuli as accurately as training stimuli. If, on the other hand, the subject learned the MTS task itemspecifically, then the subject could have learned the configural pattern of the stimulus displays or the if-then rule for each of the stimulus combinations. Configural learning refers to learning the whole gestalt of each display and learning which comparison choice to make based on this

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“…However, its validity has recently been questioned, and conceptual theories and findings have been produced with the objective of distinguishing the two phenomena: generalized identity performance, such as generalized identity, which is usually treated as evidence of reflexivity 1 (e.g., Barros, Galvão, & McIlvane, 2002;Kastak & Schusterman, 1994) and transitivity (e.g., D'Amato et al, 1985;Schusterman & Kastak, 1993;Yamamoto & Asano, 1995). Symmetry has received special attention in the literature because the results with nonhuman subjects have mostly been negative (Barros, Galvão, & Fontes, 1996;D'Amato et al, 1985;Dugdale & Lowe, 2000;Gray, 1966;Hogan & Zentall, 1977;Holmes, 1979;Lionello-DeNolf & Urcuioli, 2002;Lipkens, Kop, & Matthijs, 1988;; for a review see Lionello-DeNolf, 2009) and because some experiments have shown that one can facilitate the emergence of the other properties by directly training this property (e.g., Schusterman & Kastak, 1993;Yamamoto & Asano, 1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Symmetry by Comparing the Acquisition of Symmetric and Nonsymmetric Conditional Relations in a Capuchin Monkey

Filho

Silva

Velasco³

et al. 2016

Int. j. psychol. res.

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Article history: Received: 15-04-2016 Revised: 29-06-2016 Accepted: 12-08-2016 Key words: conditional discrimination; equivalence class formation; symmetry; Sapajus sppThe present study presents a procedure to assess the property of symmetry by comparing the acquisition of conditional relations that are consistent and inconsistent with this property in a capuchin monkey (Sapajus spp.). One young male monkey underwent arbitrary matching-to-sample training. The experiment had four phases: Phase 1.1 (establishing A1B1 and A2B2 relations), Phase 1.2 (reinforcing B1A1 and B2A2 relations, consistent with the property of symmetry), Phase 2.1 (establishing A3B3 and A4B4 relations), and Phase 2.2 (reinforcing B3A4 and B4A3 relations, inconsistent with the property of symmetry). A comparison between Phase 1.2 (consistent) and Phase 2.2 (inconsistent) showed faster acquisition of consistent relations (B1A1 and B2A2) than inconsistent relations (B3A4 and B4A3). The results suggest that the established conditional discriminations may have the property of symmetry and confirm the potential of comparative analysis between the acquisition of conditional discriminations as a promising procedure to evaluate equivalence class formation in nonhuman subjects.

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Transfer of visual identity matching-to-sample in two california sea lions (zalophus californianus)

Cited by 84 publications

References 21 publications

Sea Lions and Equivalence: Expanding Classes by Exclusion

Sea Lions and Equivalence: Expanding Classes by Exclusion

Learning strategies in matching to sample: If-then and configural learning by pigeons

Assessing Symmetry by Comparing the Acquisition of Symmetric and Nonsymmetric Conditional Relations in a Capuchin Monkey

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