Development of a Single-Code/Default Coding Strategy in Pigeons

We tested the hypothesis that pigeons could use a cognitively efficient coding strategy by training them on a conditional discrimination (delayed symbolic matching) in which one alternative was correct following the presentation of one sample (one-to-one), whereas the other alternative was correct f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2000-05, Vol.11 (3), p.261-264
Main Authors: Clement, Tricia S., Zentall, Thomas R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Animal cognition
Animals
Attention
Birds
Columbidae
Delayed
Developmental delay
Discrimination
Discrimination Learning
Efficient strategies
Experimental psychology
Female
Learning
Male
Matching
Memory
Mental stimulation
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Pecking order
Pigeons
Problem Solving
Research Reports
Retention
Retention (Psychology)
Training
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Summary:We tested the hypothesis that pigeons could use a cognitively efficient coding strategy by training them on a conditional discrimination (delayed symbolic matching) in which one alternative was correct following the presentation of one sample (one-to-one), whereas the other alternative was correct following the presentation of any one of four other samples (many-to-one). When retention intervals of different durations were inserted between the offset of the sample and the onset of the choice stimuli, divergent retention functions were found. With increasing retention interval, matching accuracy on trials involving any of the many-to-one samples was increasingly better than matching accuracy on trials involving the one-to-one sample. Furthermore, following this test, pigeons treated a novel sample as if it had been one of the many-to-one samples. The data suggest that rather than learning each of the five sample-comparison associations independently, the pigeons developed a cognitively efficient single-code/default coding strategy.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1111/1467-9280.00252