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How do crows and parrots come to spontaneously perceive relations-between-relations?
Journal article   Peer reviewed

How do crows and parrots come to spontaneously perceive relations-between-relations?

Anna A Smirnova, Tatiana A Obozova, Zoya A Zorina and Edward A Wasserman
Current opinion in behavioral sciences, Vol.37, pp.109-117
02/2021
DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.11.009

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Abstract

Can nonhuman animals use an abstract sense of sameness to perceive relations-between-relations? This question has been studied over the last 40 years; yet, the extent to which nonhuman species can do so is still debated. Here, we review evidence suggesting that crows and parrots can acquire an abstract sameness rule after mastering a series of highly varied identity matching-to-sample (IMTS) tasks and later spontaneously apply this rule to perform relational matching-to-sample (RMTS) tasks. Such spontaneously successful performance on RMTS tasks may critically depend on the nature of an organism’s prior IMTS learning experience.

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