Transverse patterning in pigeons

Couvillon, P. A.; Bitterman, M. E.

doi:10.3758/bf03199013

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…When the third problem is first introduced (see right panel of Fig. 6), control animals initially perform very well on one problem, at approximately chance on another, and well below chance on the third, a pattern that may indicate an attempt at an "elemental" solution (and which has been observed in the transverse patterning task previously; see Couvillon and Bitterman, 1996;Wynne, 1996). The performance of fornix-lesioned animals conforms to this same pattern.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Fornix Lesions Can Facilitate Acquisition of the Transverse Patterning Task: A Challenge for “Configural” Theories of Hippocampal Function

et al. 1998

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Configural theories of hippocampal function predict that hippocampal dysfunction should impair acquisition of the transverse patterning task, which involves the concurrent solution of three discrimination problems: A+ versus B-; B+ versus C-; and C+ versus A-. The present study tested this prediction in rats using computer-graphic stimuli presented on a touchscreen. Experiment 1 assessed the effects of fornix lesions when the three problems were introduced sequentially (phase 1: A+ vs B-; phase 2: A+ vs B-, B+ vs C-; phase 3: A+ vs B-, B+ vs C-, C+ vs A-). Fornix lesions significantly facilitated acquisition of the complete transverse patterning task (phase 3) but had no effect on the number of sessions or errors required to attain criterion during phase 1 or phase 2. In experiment 2, in which all three problems were presented concurrently from the outset of training, fornix-lesioned animals outperformed control animals during the seventh block of acquisition trials and were not impaired during any stage of acquisition. Importantly, these same animals were significantly impaired on two allocentric spatial tasks: T-maze alternation (experiments 1 and 2) and the Morris Swim Task (experiment 1). These results contradict the predictions of configural theories of hippocampal function and cast doubt on the popular notion that spatial learning is a special case of configural learning.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Fornix Lesions Can Facilitate Acquisition of the Transverse Patterning Task: A Challenge for “Configural” Theories of Hippocampal Function

et al. 1998

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“…When participants were then introduced to novel stimuli and trained on the pairs XY and YZ, whether they defaulted to a transitive or a transverse interpretation of test pair XZ depended on which condition they had originally been exposed to. Participants who learned that A>C defaulted to the transitive assumption that X>Z, whereas participants who learned that C>A defaulted to the transverse assumption that Z>X. Non-human animals are also able to learn to rely on transverse patterning (Couvillon and Bitterman, 1996;Alvarado and Bachevalier, 2005), although this appears to require considerably more training than typical transitive inference paradigms. This more flexible capacity to understand complex webs of relationship between stimuli that do not necessarily resolve to a strict ordering is sometimes referred to as "configural" learning (see Jacobs, 2006, for review).…”

Section: From Phenomenon To Modelmentioning

confidence: 98%

Positional inference in rhesus macaques

2021

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Understanding how organisms make transitive inferences is critical to understanding their general ability to learn serial relationships. In this context, transitive inference (TI) can be understood as a specific heuristic that applies broadly to many different serial learning tasks, which have been the focus of hundreds of studies involving dozens of species. In the present study, monkeys learned the order of 7-item lists of photographic stimuli by trial and error, and were then tested on "derived" lists. These derived lists combined stimuli from multiple training lists in ambiguous ways. We found that subjects displayed strong preferences when presented with novel test pairs. These preferences were helpful when test pairs had an ordering congruent with their ranks during training, but yielded consistently below-chance performance when pairs had an incongruent order relative to training. This behavior can be explained by the joint contributions of transitive inference and another heuristic that we refer to as "positional inference." Positional inferences play a complementary role to transitive inferences in facilitating choices between novel pairs of stimuli. The theoretical framework that best explains both transitive and positional inferences is a spatial model that represents both the position and uncertainty of each stimulus. A computational implementation of this framework yields accurate predictions about both correct responses and errors for derived lists.

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“…The significance of any one item depends on with which other item it is currently paired. The task can be solved by apes (Thompson, 1953), rodents (Alvarado and Rudy, 1992), pigeons (Couvillon and Bitterman, 1996;Wynne, 1996), and humans (Astur and Sutherland, 1998;Rudy et al, 1993). Selective damage to the rodent hippocampal formation impairs acquisition of this task with visual stimuli (Alvarado and Rudy, 1995a,b), whereas fornix transection impairs performance with olfactory (Dusek and Eichenbaum, 1998) but not visual (Bussey et al, 1998) stimuli.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Object and spatial relational memory in adult rhesus monkeys is impaired by neonatal lesions of the hippocampal formation but not the amygdaloid complex

2002

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Adult rhesus monkeys with neonatal aspiration lesions of the hippocampal formation or the amygdaloid complex (including their respective subjacent cortices) and their age-matched controls were tested on the transverse patterning problem (A+ vs. B-, B+ vs. C- and C+ vs. A-) and a spatial version of the delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) task with delays of 10 s to 30 s, 60 s, 120 s, and 600 s. Monkeys with neonatal damage to the amygdaloid complex learned both tasks and did not differ from controls at any delay of the spatial DNMS task. Monkeys with neonatal hippocampal damage, however, were unable to learn transverse patterning, though they easily transferred to a linear series (A+ vs. B-, B+ vs. C-, and C+ vs. X-). Three of the four were also unable to reach criterion on the spatial DNMS task within the limits of testing, and the performance of all four monkeys deteriorated with increasing choice delays. The data suggest a role of the primate hippocampal region in both object and spatial relational learning.

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Transverse patterning in pigeons

Cited by 15 publications

References 37 publications

Fornix Lesions Can Facilitate Acquisition of the Transverse Patterning Task: A Challenge for “Configural” Theories of Hippocampal Function

Fornix Lesions Can Facilitate Acquisition of the Transverse Patterning Task: A Challenge for “Configural” Theories of Hippocampal Function

Positional inference in rhesus macaques

Object and spatial relational memory in adult rhesus monkeys is impaired by neonatal lesions of the hippocampal formation but not the amygdaloid complex

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