Journal article
Using the reassignment procedure to test object representation in pigeons and people
Learning & behavior, Vol.43(2), pp.188-207
06/2015
DOI: 10.3758/s13420-015-0173-2
PMID: 25762428
Abstract
In four experiments, we evaluated Lea’s (1984) reassignment procedure for studying object representation in pigeons (Experiments 1–3) and humans (Experiment 4). In the initial phase of Experiment 1, pigeons were taught to make discriminative button responses to five views of each of four objects. Using the same set of buttons in the second phase, one view of each object was trained to a different button. In the final phase, the four views that had been withheld in the second stage were shown. In Experiment 2, pigeons were initially trained just like the birds in Experiment 1. Then, one view of each object was reassigned to a different button, now using a new set of four response buttons. In Experiment 3, the reassignment paradigm was again tested using the number of pecks to bind together different views of the same object. Across all three experiments, pigeons showed statistically significant generalization of the new response to the non-reassigned views, but such responding was well below that to the reassigned view. In Experiment 4, human participants were studied using the same stimuli and task as the pigeons in Experiment 1. People did strongly generalize the new response to the non-reassigned views. These results indicate that humans, but not pigeons, can employ a unified object representation that they can flexibly map to different responses under the reassignment procedure.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Using the reassignment procedure to test object representation in pigeons and people
- Creators
- Jessie Peissig - Department of Psychology California State University Fullerton P.O. Box 6846 Fullerton CA 92834 USAYasuo Nagasaka - Brain Science Institute, RIKEN Wako JapanMichael Young - Department of Psychological Sciences Kansas State University Manhattan KS USAEdward Wasserman - Department of Psychology The University of Iowa Iowa City IA USAIrving Biederman - Department of Psychology University of Southern California Los Angeles CA USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Learning & behavior, Vol.43(2), pp.188-207
- Publisher
- Springer US; New York
- DOI
- 10.3758/s13420-015-0173-2
- PMID
- 25762428
- ISSN
- 1543-4494
- eISSN
- 1543-4508
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 06/2015
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984070743002771
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