Two experiments examined the effects of video coherence on the discrimination of relative motion by pigeons using a go/no-go procedure. Pigeons were trained to discriminate video stimuli in which the camera's perspective went either "around" or "through" the interior opening of 2 approaching objects. Experiment 1 used a within-groups design and Experiment 2 used a between-groups design to examine how sequencing these videos in a coherent smooth forward order versus a randomly scrambled order influenced learning. Discrimination learning was significantly faster with the coherent sequences. It is suggested that the pigeon visual system integrates 3-dimensional motion signals across space and time to produce a stable, object-based, perceptual world.
The authors report 2 experiments that test the stuck-in-time hypothesis, which argues that animals cannot time-date events and thus do not remember when events occurred and do not anticipate future events. In Experiment 1, rats in the experimental condition could earn a large reward by reentering the 1st arm that they visited on a radial maze. They did not learn to reenter this arm early and did no better than did a control group that was not given a large reward for reentering the first arm. In Experiment 2, rats in the experimental group could earn a large reward by delaying entry into a distinctive arm. These rats did not learn to delay entry into the distinctive arm, and they performed no better than did the control-group rats, which did not receive a large reward for delayed entry. These experiments provide further evidence in support of the stuck-in-time hypothesis.
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