An Apparatus for Testing Visual Discrimination in Animals

Munn, Norman L.

doi:10.1080/08856559.1931.10532410

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Other mammals, lacking fingers, look where they put their noses. Thus, touching the cues seems to be quite generally important for efficient discrimination performance (Ehrenfreund, 1948;Gardner & Nissen, 1948;Munn, 1931)-even rats look before they leap. Atkinson (1961) wrote that more experimental data were needed before the concepts of ohserving-response theories could be related to empirical variables, such as the properties of stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial variables, observing responses, and discrimination learning sets.

Stollnitz¹

1965

Psychological Review

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An observing response is any response that results in exposure to a discriminative stimulus. 2 assumptions are made: that the probability of occurrence of an observing response varies (a) directly with cue area, and (b) inversely with spatial separation between cue and response. With these assumptions, observing-response theory explains the effects of these 2 spatial variables on discrimination learning by monkeys, chimpanzees, and children. Prolonged training on a single discrimination problem can overcome the difficulty produced by these variables, but, surprisingly, the difficulty persists through extensive learning-set training. It is concluded that changing problems every few trials in learning-set training results in extinction of any observing response that might be reinforced within problems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial variables, observing responses, and discrimination learning sets.

Stollnitz¹

1965

Psychological Review

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“…The apparatus used by Fritz was a single-unit discrimination box so arranged as to force the animal towards the visual stimulus. In a recent paper by Munn (7) and in one by the present author (4) it was pointed out that an apparatus which forced the animal through the stimulus was a much more efficient training device than one which merely forced hi™ towards it. It has also been discovered by Stone (8) that a multiple-unit discrimination box, allowing the animal to make a series of consecutive discriminations, is more efficient than a single-unit box.…”

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confidence: 83%

Antagonistic visual discrimination habits in the white rat.

Krechevsky¹

1932

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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This research was an attempt to investigate further the phenomenon reported by Fritz (2) viz., the inability of the white rat to decrease the time of reversed discrimination habits upon repetition. Fritz trained 4 rats to discriminate between two alleys on the basis of a visual stimulus. After the animals had learned to choose the alley with a lighted window as the one leading to food, Fritz reversed the stimuli and the animal had to learn to avoid the lighted window and go towards the darkened one. One animal was given a series of 13 reversals; another, 7; the third, 5; and the fourth, 3. On the basis of his results Fritz concluded that "except for negative transfer, each reversal seems to be more or less of an independent learning period" and that therefore his results "seem to confirm Hunter's'belief that the white rat does not employ symbolic processes."Fritz was cognizant of the fact that the validity of any conclusions to be drawn from his experiment was "partly a function of the length of time the experiment is continued" and he therefore states that "an attempt was made to prolong the experiment until there seemed to be reasonable grounds for assuming that ample opportunity had been given for the display of abilities particularly in the case of one rat." Fritz apparently measured "length of the experiment" by the total number of trials (not reversals) he gave the animals and the total number of days the animate were subjected to training, for he points out in his conclusion that the duration of the training period "in the case of 1 rat lasted for a period of time equivalent to 12 years in the lifetime of man."It appeared to the writer, however, that the validity of the 263

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“…However, rats were able to discriminate between a diamond and a circle with much less difficulty. Munn (19316) also found that rats were unable to learn to discriminate between a normal square and a circle. Dodwell (1957), however, found that rats could solve this problem very readily if they were first trained to discriminate between horizontal and vertical striations with horizontal positive, and if in the square versus circle training the square was made the positive figure.…”

Section: Discrimination Of Orientation (I) Rectanglesmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Since the door openings are always the same shape the animal cannot learn on the basis of non-visual cues, as in the Fields modification of the Yerkes-Watson discrimination apparatus. An early form of this apparatus was described and used by Munn (19316). Grice (19480) used an essentially similar apparatus, and it has recently been used in a series of experiments by Gibson and her co-workers (Gibson and Walk, 1956;Gibson et al, 1958;Walk et al, 1958Walk et al, , 1959.…”

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confidence: 99%