Transfer of oddity learning in the pigeon

Abstract

Two pigeons were trained on a six-key modified oddity-from-sample procedure. The stimuli were color pictures of birds, butterflies, and human faces. Initially, the third peck on the sample key (which presented one of three different bird pictures) lit only one comparison key. Every three additional pecks on the sample illuminated another comparison key. Fifteen sample pecks produced the maximum of five comparison stimuli. A peck on the comparison key that presented the nonmatching bird picture produced grain. Pecks on matching keys turned off all the comparison keys and repeated the trial. The birds learned to peck each sample until the nonmatching comparison stimulus was produced, and then to peck that key. After acquisition (70%-90% accuracy), the three bird stimuli were replaced by a new set of three bird pictures. Subsequent phases provided new sets of bird, butterfly, and human face stimuli. Both birds showed transfer of oddity learning to the novel samples. The data suggest that the birds may have been engaging in conceptualtype oddity learning, rather than learning discrete five-key discriminations or a series of two component chains.

Teaching pigeons an abstract relational rule: Insideness

“…On the other hand, pigeons learn only with difficulty, if at all, the general rule that would enable them to signal whether or not an arbitrary pair of visual stimuli are identical to each other or, if given a target, to pick the odd or matching stimulus out of any arbitrary set (e.g., Pisacreta, Lefave, Lesneski, & Potter, 1985;Urcuioli, 1985;Zentall & Hogan, 1978). Some researchers (e.g., Mackintosh, 1983) believe that pigeons (and presumably other subprimate species) are incapable of mastering such abstract relational rules at all.…”

Visual and olfactory oddity learning in rats: What evidence is necessary to show conceptual behavior?

“…In view of the importance of the oddity concept and the continuing publication of questionable claims of its use by animals (e.g., Pisacreta, Lefave, Lesneski, & Potter, 1985), another presentation of the evidence necessary to demonstrate an animal's use of the oddity concept is in order. The present study provides empirical evidence on the most crucial point in the argument-namely, the need for first-trial transfer data.…”

Pattern Recognition Invariance in Pigeons (<em>Columbia Livia</em>): Outline, Color and Contrast

“…There can thus be little doubt that pigeons can apply a relational, conceptual rule in the matching/oddity paradigm (Lombardi, Fachinelli and Delius, 1984; Edwards, MiUer and Zentall, 1985; Pisacreta, Lefave, Lesneski and Potter, 1985;Lombardi, Delius and HoUard, 1986; Wright, Cook, Rivera and Delius, 1988) rather than only stimulus or configuration specific rules as several other authors maintain (Carter and Werner, 1978;Mackintosh, 1983;D'Amato, Sahnon, Loukas andTomie, 1985). The present results considerably discredit the suggestion that our pigeons somehow solved the oddity task when faced with novel shapes on the basis of simple chance similarities between the stimuli constituting the training sets and those constituting the testing sets.…”