Journal article
Pigeons and humans are more sensitive to nonaccidental than to metric changes in visual objects
Behavioural processes, Vol.77(2), pp.199-209
2008
DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2007.11.009
PMCID: PMC2277101
PMID: 18248918
Abstract
Humans and macaques are more sensitive to differences in nonaccidental image properties, such as straight vs. curved contours, than to differences in metric properties, such as degree of curvature [Biederman, I., Bar, M., 1999. One-shot viewpoint invariance in matching novel objects. Vis. Res. 39, 2885–2899; Kayaert, G., Biederman, I., Vogels, R., 2003. Shape tuning in macaque inferior temporal cortex. J. Neurosci. 23, 3016–3027; Kayaert, G., Biederman, I., Vogels, R., 2005. Representation of regular and irregular shapes in macaque inferotemporal cortex. Cereb. Cortex 15, 1308–1321]. This differential sensitivity allows facile recognition when the object is viewed at an orientation in depth not previously experienced. In Experiment 1, we trained pigeons to discriminate grayscale, shaded images of four shapes. Pigeons made more confusion errors to shapes that shared more nonaccidental properties. Although the images in that experiment were not well controlled for incidental changes in metric properties, the same results were apparent with better controlled stimuli in Experiment 2: pigeons trained to discriminate a target shape from a metrically changed shape and a nonaccidentally changed shape committed more confusion errors to the metrically changed shape, suggesting that they perceived it to be more similar to the target shape. Humans trained with similar stimuli and procedure exhibited the same tendency to make more errors to the metrically changed shape. These results document the greater saliency of nonaccidental differences for shape recognition and discrimination in a non-primate species and suggest that nonaccidental sensitivity may be characteristic of all shape-discriminating species.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Pigeons and humans are more sensitive to nonaccidental than to metric changes in visual objects
- Creators
- Olga F Lazareva - University of Iowa, United StatesEdward A Wasserman - University of Iowa, United StatesIrving Biederman - University of Southern California, United States
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Behavioural processes, Vol.77(2), pp.199-209
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.beproc.2007.11.009
- PMID
- 18248918
- PMCID
- PMC2277101
- NLM abbreviation
- Behav Processes
- ISSN
- 0376-6357
- eISSN
- 1872-8308
- Publisher
- Elsevier B.V
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2008
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984070604002771
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