Open AccessTwo-item conditional same–different categorization in pigeons: Finding differences.
Author(s) -
Francisca Díaz,
Ellen O'Donoghue,
Edward A. Wasserman
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of experimental psychology. animal learning and cognition
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.041
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 2329-8464
pISSN - 2329-8456
DOI - 10.1037/xan0000297
Subject(s) - categorization , psychology , perception , cognitive psychology , repetition (rhetorical device) , psycinfo , documentation , artificial intelligence , computer science , medline , linguistics , philosophy , neuroscience , programming language , political science , law
Research on same-different categorization has shown that mastery of tasks of this kind can be strongly affected by the number of items in the training arrays-for both humans and nonhuman animals. Evidence for two-item same-different categorization in pigeons is decidedly mixed: although some investigations have succeeded, others have failed. To date, no research has documented successful conditional same-different categorization using just two items, nor has research explored how pigeons' responses in this paradigm might be influenced by perceptual characteristics of the training stimuli. Through a series of methodological modifications, we provide the first successful documentation that pigeons can perform two-item conditional same-different categorization to a high degree of accuracy; further, they can do so without the support of item repetition. We also show for the first time that the perceptual disparity between the items in pairs of different stimuli plays a key part in pigeons' same-different categorization performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).