Journal article
Effects of stimulus manipulations on visual categorization in pigeons
Behavioural processes, Vol.72(3), pp.224-233
2006
DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2006.03.004
PMID: 16616817
Abstract
Four pigeons were previously trained [Lazareva, O.F., Freiburger, K.L., Wasserman, E.A., 2004. Pigeons concurrently categorize photographs at both basic and superordinate levels. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 11, 1111-1117] to classify color photographs into either their proper basic-level category (cars, chairs, flowers, or people) or a superordinate-level category (nominally natural or artificial). In Experiment 1, the same pigeons were shown either reflected or inverted versions of the training stimuli. Reflection had no effect on pigeons' classification behavior, whereas inversion impaired discrimination of all stimulus categories, except flowers, on the basic-level and superordinate-level tasks. Pixel matching analysis revealed that pattern matching played at most a minor role in the birds' categorization behavior. In Experiment 2, the pigeons were shown test stimuli that were either blurred or quartered and scrambled. Blurring impaired discrimination of cars, but had no effect on discrimination of people and flowers; scrambling impaired discrimination of people and flowers leaving discrimination of cars and chairs unaffected. These results suggest that categorization of flowers and people may be controlled primarily by the overall shape of the object rather than by local features, whereas categorization of cars and chairs may rely primarily on local features rather than the overall shape of the object.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Effects of stimulus manipulations on visual categorization in pigeons
- Creators
- Olga F LAZAREVA - University of Iowa, United StatesKate L FREIBURGER - University of Iowa, United StatesEdward A WASSERMAN - University of Iowa, United States
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Behavioural processes, Vol.72(3), pp.224-233
- Publisher
- Elsevier; Shannon
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.beproc.2006.03.004
- PMID
- 16616817
- ISSN
- 0376-6357
- eISSN
- 1872-8308
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2006
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984070755702771
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