Chiesa, A. D., Pecchia, T., Tommasi, L., & Vallortigara, G. (2006). Multiple landmarks, the encoding of environmental geometry and the spatial logics of a dual brain. Anim. Cogn., 9(4), 281–293.
Abstract: A series of place learning experiments was carried out in young chicks (Gallus gallus) in order to investigate how the geometry of a landmark array and that of a walled enclosure compete when disoriented animals could rely on both of them to re-orient towards the centre of the enclosure. A square-shaped array (four wooden sticks) was placed in the middle of a square-shaped enclosure, the two structures being concentric. Chicks were trained to ground-scratch to search for food hidden in the centre of the enclosure (and the array). To check for effects of array degradation, one, two, three or all landmarks were removed during test trials. Chicks concentrated their searching activity in the central area of the enclosure, but their accuracy was inversely contingent on the number of landmarks removed; moreover, the landmarks still present within the enclosure appeared to influence the shape of the searching patterns. The reduction in the number of landmarks affected the searching strategy of chicks, suggesting that they had focussed mainly on local cues when landmarks were present within the enclosure. When all the landmarks were removed, chicks searched over a larger area, suggesting an absolute encoding of distances from the local cues and less reliance on the relationships provided by the geometry of the enclosure. Under conditions of monocular vision, chicks tended to rely on different strategies to localize the centre on the basis of the eye (and thus the hemisphere) in use, the left hemisphere attending to details of the environment and the right hemisphere attending to the global shape.
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Zentall, T. R., Hogan, D. E., Edwards, C. A., & Hearst, E. (1980). Oddity learning in the pigeon as a function of the number of incorrect alternatives. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 6(3), 278–299.
Abstract: Pigeons' rate of learning a two-color oddity task increased as a function of the number of incorrect alternatives from 2 to 24 in Experiments 1, 2, and 3. In general, pigeons that were transferred from many-incorrect-alternative to two-incorrect-alternative oddity performed better than controls, but considerably below baseline (Experiments 2 and 3). In Experiment 4, pigeons showed no unconditioned tendency to peck the odd stimulus among 24 incorect alternatives, when pecks were nondifferentially reinforced, and in Experiment 5, when this procedure was preceded by oddity training, a progressive drop in odd-stimulus pecking was found. In Experiment 6, pigeons exposed to a nine-stimulus array in which the odd stimulus appeared (a) in the center or (b) separate from the array learned faster than when the odd stimulus was at the edge. This outcome suggests ththe figure-ground relation between the odd stimulus and the incorrect alternatives plays a role in the facilitation produced by increasing the number of incorrect alternatives but that poor performance on the standard, three-alternative oddity task appears to be due to center-odd trials which provide a difficult size or number discrimination.
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Sutton, J. E., & Shettleworth, S. J. (2005). Internal sense of direction and landmark use in pigeons (Columba livia). J Comp Psychol, 119(3), 273–284.
Abstract: The relative importance of an internal sense of direction based on inertial cues and landmark piloting for small-scale navigation by White King pigeons (Columba livia) was investigated in an arena search task. Two groups of pigeons differed in whether they had access to visual cues outside the arena. In Experiment 1, pigeons were given experience with 2 different entrances and all pigeons transferred accurate searching to novel entrances. Explicit disorientation before entering did not affect accuracy. In Experiments 2-4, landmarks and inertial cues were put in conflict or tested 1 at a time. Pigeons tended to follow the landmarks in a conflict situation but could use an internal sense of direction to search when landmarks were unavailable.
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Reid, P. J., & Shettleworth, S. J. (1992). Detection of cryptic prey: search image or search rate? J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 18(3), 273–286.
Abstract: Animals' improvement in capturing cryptic prey with experience has long been attributed to a perceptual mechanism, the specific search image. Detection could also be improved by adjusting rate of search. In a series of studies using both naturalistic and operant search tasks, pigeons searched for wheat, dyed to produce 1 conspicuous and 2 equally cryptic prey types. Contrary to the predictions of the search-rate hypothesis, pigeons given a choice between the 2 cryptic types took the type experienced most recently. However, experience with 1 cryptic type improved accuracy on the other cryptic type, a result inconsistent with a search image specific to 1 prey type. Search image may better be thought of as priming of attention to those features of the prey type that best distinguish the prey from the background.
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Santos, L. R., Miller, C. T., & Hauser, M. D. (2003). Representing tools: how two non-human primate species distinguish between the functionally relevant and irrelevant features of a tool. Anim. Cogn., 6(4), 269–281.
Abstract: Few studies have examined whether non-human tool-users understand the properties that are relevant for a tool's function. We tested cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) and rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) on an expectancy violation procedure designed to assess whether these species make distinctions between the functionally relevant and irrelevant features of a tool. Subjects watched an experimenter use a tool to push a grape down a ramp, and then were presented with different displays in which the features of the original tool (shape, color, orientation) were selectively varied. Results indicated that both species looked longer when a newly shaped stick acted on the grape than when a newly colored stick performed the same action, suggesting that both species perceive shape as a more salient transformation than color. In contrast, tamarins, but not rhesus, attended to changes in the tool's orientation. We propose that some non-human primates begin with a predisposition to attend to a tool's shape and, with sufficient experience, develop a more sophisticated understanding of the features that are functionally relevant to tools.
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Friederici, A. D., & Alter, K. (2004). Lateralization of auditory language functions: a dynamic dual pathway model. Brain Lang, 89(2), 267–276.
Abstract: Spoken language comprehension requires the coordination of different subprocesses in time. After the initial acoustic analysis the system has to extract segmental information such as phonemes, syntactic elements and lexical-semantic elements as well as suprasegmental information such as accentuation and intonational phrases, i.e., prosody. According to the dynamic dual pathway model of auditory language comprehension syntactic and semantic information are primarily processed in a left hemispheric temporo-frontal pathway including separate circuits for syntactic and semantic information whereas sentence level prosody is processed in a right hemispheric temporo-frontal pathway. The relative lateralization of these functions occurs as a result of stimulus properties and processing demands. The observed interaction between syntactic and prosodic information during auditory sentence comprehension is attributed to dynamic interactions between the two hemispheres.
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Seyfarth, R. M., Cheney, D. L., & Bergman, T. J. (2005). Primate social cognition and the origins of language. Trends. Cognit. Sci., 9(6), 264–266.
Abstract: Are the cognitive mechanisms underlying language unique, or can similar mechanisms be found in other domains? Recent field experiments demonstrate that baboons' knowledge of their companions' social relationships is based on discrete-valued traits (identity, rank, kinship) that are combined to create a representation of social relations that is hierarchically structured, open-ended, rule-governed, and independent of sensory modality. The mechanisms underlying language might have evolved from the social knowledge of our pre-linguistic primate ancestors.
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Levy, J. (1977). The mammalian brain and the adaptive advantage of cerebral asymmetry. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 299, 264–272.
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Benard, J., Stach, S., & Giurfa, M. (2006). Categorization of visual stimuli in the honeybee Apis mellifera. Anim. Cogn., 9(4), 257–270.
Abstract: Categorization refers to the classification of perceptual input into defined functional groups. We present and discuss evidence suggesting that stimulus categorization can also be found in an invertebrate, the honeybee Apis mellifera, thus underlining the generality across species of this cognitive process. Honeybees show positive transfer of appropriate responding from a trained to a novel set of visual stimuli. Such a transfer was demonstrated for specific isolated features such as symmetry or orientation, but also for assemblies (layouts) of features. Although transfer from training to novel stimuli can be achieved by stimulus generalization of the training stimuli, most of these transfer tests involved clearly distinguishable stimuli for which generalization would be reduced. Though in most cases specific experimental controls such as stimulus balance and discriminability are still required, it seems appropriate to characterize the performance of honeybees as reflecting categorization. Further experiments should address the issue of which categorization theory accounts better for the visual performances of honeybees.
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Loveland, K. A. (1995). Self-recognition in the bottlenose dolphin: ecological considerations. Conscious Cogn, 4(2), 254–257.
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