| Records |
| Author |
Terrace, H.S. |
| Title |
Chunking by a pigeon in a serial learning task |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year  |
1987 |
Publication |
Nature |
Abbreviated Journal |
Nature |
| Volume |
325 |
Issue |
7000 |
Pages |
149-151 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Cognition/*physiology; Columbidae/*physiology; Feedback; Learning/*physiology; Male |
| Abstract |
A basic principle of human memory is that lists that can be organized into memorable 'chunks' are easier to remember. Memory span is limited to a roughly constant number of chunks and is to a large extent independent of the amount of informaton contained in each chunk. Depending on the ingenuity of the code used to integrate discrete items into chunks, one can substantially increase the number of items that can be recalled correctly. Newly developed paradigms for studying memory in non-verbal organisms allow comparison of the abilities of human and non-human subjects to memorize lists. Here I present two types of evidence that pigeons 'chunk' 5-element lists whose components (colours and achromatic geometric forms) are clustered into distinct groups. Those lists were learned twice as rapidly as a homogeneous list of colours or heterogeneous lists in which the elements are not clustered. The pigeons were also tested for knowledge of the order of two elements drawn from the 5-element lists. They responded in the correct order only to those subsets that contained a chunk boundary. Thus chunking can be studied profitably in animal subjects; the cognitive processes that allow an organism to form chunks do no presuppose linguistic competence. |
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Place of Publication |
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| Language |
English |
Summary Language |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0028-0836 |
ISBN |
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Medium |
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Expedition |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
PMID:3808071 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2792 |
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| Author |
Boysen, S.T.; Berntson, G.G. |
| Title |
Responses to quantity: perceptual versus cognitive mechanisms in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
1995 |
Publication |
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process |
| Volume |
21 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
82-86 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Behavior, Animal; Choice Behavior; Cognition/*physiology; Female; *Pan troglodytes; Perception/*physiology; Reinforcement (Psychology); Task Performance and Analysis |
| Abstract |
Two chimpanzees were trained to select among 2 different amounts of candy (1-6 items). The task was designed so that selection of either array by the active (selector) chimpanzee resulted in that array being given to the passive (observer) animal, with the remaining (nonselected) array going to the selector. Neither animal was able to select consistently the smaller array, which would reap the larger reward. Rather, both animals preferentially selected the larger array, thereby receiving the smaller number of reinforcers. When Arabic numerals were substituted for the food arrays, however, the selector animal evidenced more optimal performance, immediately selecting the smaller numeral and thus receiving the larger reward. These findings suggest that a basic predisposition to respond to the perceptual-motivational features of incentive stimuli can interfere with task performance and that this interference can be overridden when abstract symbols serve as choice stimuli. |
| Address |
Comparative Cognition Project, Ohio State University, Columbus 43210-1222 |
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Place of Publication |
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| Language |
English |
Summary Language |
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Original Title |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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| Series Volume |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0097-7403 |
ISBN |
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Medium |
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| Area |
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Expedition |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
PMID:7844508 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2783 |
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| Author |
Macphail, E.M. |
| Title |
Cognitive function in mammals: the evolutionary perspective |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
1996 |
Publication |
Brain research. Cognitive brain research |
Abbreviated Journal |
Brain Res Cogn Brain Res |
| Volume |
3 |
Issue |
3-4 |
Pages |
279-290 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Cognition/*physiology; Conditioning (Psychology)/*physiology; Evolution; Humans; Learning/*physiology; Task Performance and Analysis |
| Abstract |
The work of behavioural pharmacologists has concentrated on small animals, such as rodents and pigeons. The validity of extrapolation of their findings to humans depends upon the existence of parallels in both physiology and psychology between these animals and humans. This paper considers the question whether there are in fact substantial cognitive parallels between, first, different non-human groups of vertebrates and, second, non-humans and humans. Behavioural data from 'simple' tasks, such as habituation and conditioning, do not point to species differences among vertebrates. Using examples that concentrate on the performance of rodents and birds, it is argued that, similarly, data from more complex tasks (learning-set formation, transitive inference, and spatial memory serve as examples) reveal few if any cognitive differences amongst non-human vertebrates. This conclusion supports the notion that association formation may be the critical problem-solving process available to non-human animals; associative mechanisms are assumed to have evolved to detect causal links between events, and would therefore be relevant in all ecological niches. In agreement with this view, recent advances in comparative neurology show striking parallels in functional organisation of mammalian and avian telencephalon. Finally, it is argued that although the peculiarly human capacity for language marks a large cognitive contrast between humans and non-humans, there is good evidence-in particular, from work on implicit learning--that the learning mechanisms available to non--humans are present and do play an important role in human cognition. |
| Address |
Department of Psychology, University of York at Heslington, UK |
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English |
Summary Language |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0926-6410 |
ISBN |
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Medium |
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Expedition |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
PMID:8806029 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
refbase @ user @ |
Serial |
603 |
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| Author |
Bennett, A.T. |
| Title |
Do animals have cognitive maps? |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
1996 |
Publication |
The Journal of Experimental Biology |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Biol |
| Volume |
199 |
Issue |
Pt 1 |
Pages |
219-224 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Cognition/*physiology; Humans; Space Perception/*physiology; Visual Pathways |
| Abstract |
Drawing on studies of humans, rodents, birds and arthropods, I show that 'cognitive maps' have been used to describe a wide variety of spatial concepts. There are, however, two main definitions. One, sensu Tolman, O'Keefe and Nadel, is that a cognitive map is a powerful memory of landmarks which allows novel short-cutting to occur. The other, sensu Gallistel, is that a cognitive map is any representation of space held by an animal. Other definitions with quite different meanings are also summarised. I argue that no animal has been conclusively shown to have a cognitive map, sensu Tolman, O'Keefe and Nadel, because simpler explanations of the crucial novel short-cutting results are invariably possible. Owing to the repeated inability of experimenters to eliminate these simpler explanations over at least 15 years, and the confusion caused by the numerous contradictory definitions of a cognitive map, I argue that the cognitive map is no longer a useful hypothesis for elucidating the spatial behaviour of animals and that use of the term should be avoided. |
| Address |
Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Adelaide, Australia |
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English |
Summary Language |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0022-0949 |
ISBN |
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Medium |
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| Area |
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Expedition |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
PMID:8576693 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2756 |
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| Author |
Gallistel, C.R.; Cramer, A.E. |
| Title |
Computations on metric maps in mammals: getting oriented and choosing a multi-destination route |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
1996 |
Publication |
The Journal of Experimental Biology |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Biol |
| Volume |
199 |
Issue |
Pt 1 |
Pages |
211-217 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Brain/physiology; Cercopithecus aethiops; Cognition/*physiology; Humans; Mammals/*physiology; Movement; Orientation/*physiology; Rats; Space Perception; Visual Pathways/*physiology |
| Abstract |
The capacity to construct a cognitive map is hypothesized to rest on two foundations: (1) dead reckoning (path integration); (2) the perception of the direction and distance of terrain features relative to the animal. A map may be constructed by combining these two sources of positional information, with the result that the positions of all terrain features are represented in the coordinate framework used for dead reckoning. When animals need to become reoriented in a mapped space, results from rats and human toddlers indicate that they focus exclusively on the shape of the perceived environment, ignoring non-geometric features such as surface colors. As a result, in a rectangular space, they are misoriented half the time even when the two ends of the space differ strikingly in their appearance. In searching for a hidden object after becoming reoriented, both kinds of subjects search on the basis of the object's mapped position in the space rather than on the basis of its relationship to a goal sign (e.g. a distinctive container or nearby marker), even though they have demonstrably noted the relationship between the goal and the goal sign. When choosing a multidestination foraging route, vervet monkeys look at least three destinations ahead, even though they are only capable of keeping a maximum of six destinations in mind at once. |
| Address |
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles 90095, USA |
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English |
Summary Language |
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Original Title |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0022-0949 |
ISBN |
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Medium |
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Expedition |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
PMID:8576692 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2757 |
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| Author |
Wasserman, E.A.; Gagliardi, J.L.; Cook, B.R.; Kirkpatrick-Steger, K.; Astley, S.L.; Biederman, I. |
| Title |
The pigeon's recognition of drawings of depth-rotated stimuli |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
1996 |
Publication |
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process |
| Volume |
22 |
Issue |
2 |
Pages |
205-221 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Cognition/*physiology; Columbidae; Discrimination (Psychology); Form Perception/*physiology; Learning/*physiology; Photic Stimulation; Rotation |
| Abstract |
Four experiments used a four-choice discrimination learning paradigm to explore the pigeon's recognition of line drawings of four objects (an airplane, a chair, a desk lamp, and a flashlight) that were rotated in depth. The pigeons reliably generalized discriminative responding to pictorial stimuli over all untrained depth rotations, despite the bird's having been trained at only a single depth orientation. These generalization gradients closely resembled those found in prior research that used other stimulus dimensions. Increasing the number of different vantage points in the training set from one to three broadened the range of generalized testing performance, with wider spacing of the training orientations more effectively broadening generalized responding. Template and geon theories of visual recognition are applied to these empirical results. |
| Address |
Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242-1407, USA. ed-wasserman@uiowa.educ |
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English |
Summary Language |
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Original Title |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0097-7403 |
ISBN |
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Medium |
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Expedition |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
PMID:8618103 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2780 |
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| Author |
Allen, C. |
| Title |
Assessing animal cognition: ethological and philosophical perspectives |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
1998 |
Publication |
Journal of Animal Science |
Abbreviated Journal |
J. Anim Sci. |
| Volume |
76 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
42-47 |
| Keywords |
Agriculture; Animal Welfare; Animals; Animals, Domestic/physiology/*psychology; Behavior, Animal/*physiology; Cognition/*physiology; *Ethology; *Philosophy; Research |
| Abstract |
Developments in the scientific and philosophical study of animal cognition and mentality are of great importance to animal scientists who face continued public scrutiny of the treatment of animals in research and agriculture. Because beliefs about animal minds, animal cognition, and animal consciousness underlie many people's views about the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals, it has become increasingly difficult for animal scientists to avoid these issues. Animal scientists may learn from ethologists who study animal cognition and mentality from an evolutionary and comparative perspective and who are at the forefront of the development of naturalistic and laboratory techniques of observation and experimentation that are capable of revealing the cognitive and mental properties of nonhuman animals. Despite growing acceptance of the ethological study of animal cognition, there are critics who dispute the scientific validity of the field, especially when the topic is animal consciousness. Here, a proper understanding of developments in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science can help to place cognitive studies on a firm methodological and philosophical foundation. Ultimately, this is an interdisciplinary task, involving scientists and philosophers. Animal scientists are well-positioned to contribute to the study of animal cognition because they typically have access to a large pool of potential research subjects whose habitats are more controlled than in most field studies while being more natural than most laboratory psychology experiments. Despite some formidable questions remaining for analysis, the prospects for progress in assessing animal cognition are bright. |
| Address |
Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, College Station 77843-4237, USA |
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English |
Summary Language |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0021-8812 |
ISBN |
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Medium |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
PMID:9464883 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2750 |
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| Author |
Tommasi, L.; Vallortigara, G. |
| Title |
Searching for the center: spatial cognition in the domestic chick (Gallus gallus) |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2000 |
Publication |
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process |
| Volume |
26 |
Issue |
4 |
Pages |
477-486 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Behavior, Animal/physiology; Chickens; Cognition/*physiology; Learning/physiology; Male; Space Perception/*physiology; Spatial Behavior/*physiology |
| Abstract |
Chicks learned to find food hidden under sawdust by ground-scratching in the central position of the floor of a closed arena. When tested inan arena of identical shape but a larger area, chicks searched at 2 different locations, one corresponding to the correct distance (i.e., center) in the smaller (training) arena and the other to the actual center of the test arena. When tested in an arena of the same shape but a smaller area, chicks searched in the center of it. These results suggest that chicks are able to encode information on the absolute and relative distance of the food from the walls of the arena. After training in the presence of a landmark located at the center of the arena, animals searched at the center even after the removal of the landmark. Marked changes in the height of the walls of the arena produced some displacement in searching behavior, suggesting that chicks used the angular size of the walls to estimate distances. |
| Address |
Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Italy |
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English |
Summary Language |
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Original Title |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0097-7403 |
ISBN |
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Medium |
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Expedition |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
PMID:11056887 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2774 |
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| Author |
Kelly, D.M.; Spetch, M.L. |
| Title |
Pigeons encode relative geometry |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2001 |
Publication |
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process |
| Volume |
27 |
Issue |
4 |
Pages |
417-422 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Behavior, Animal/physiology; Cognition/*physiology; Columbidae; Discrimination Learning/physiology; Form Perception/*physiology; Space Perception/*physiology |
| Abstract |
Pigeons were trained to search for hidden food in a rectangular environment designed to eliminate any external cues. Following training, the authors administered unreinforced test trials in which the geometric properties of the apparatus were manipulated. During tests that preserved the relative geometry but altered the absolute geometry of the environment, the pigeons continued to choose the geometrically correct corners, indicating that they encoded the relative geometry of the enclosure. When tested in a square enclosure, which distorted both the absolute and relative geometry, the pigeons randomly chose among the 4 corners, indicating that their choices were not based on cues external to the apparatus. This study provides new insight into how metric properties of an environment are encoded by pigeons. |
| Address |
Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2E9. kelly@bio.psy.ruhr-uni-bochum.de |
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English |
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0097-7403 |
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| Notes |
PMID:11676090 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2770 |
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| Author |
Griffin, D.R. |
| Title |
Animals know more than we used to think |
Type |
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| Year |
2001 |
Publication |
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
Abbreviated Journal |
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. |
| Volume |
98 |
Issue |
9 |
Pages |
4833-4834 |
| Keywords |
Animal Communication; Animals; Attention/physiology; Brain/physiology; Choice Behavior/physiology; Cognition/*physiology; Humans; Macaca mulatta/physiology/*psychology; Memory/*physiology; Optic Disk/physiology; Psychological Tests |
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English |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0027-8424 |
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| Notes |
PMID:11320232 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2823 |
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