SAME-DIFFERENT TEXTURE-DISCRIMINATION AND CONCEPT-LEARNING BY PIGEONS

The acquisition and transfer of a ''same-different'' conditional discrimination using multidimensional visual texture stimuli was investigated in pigeons. Using a choice task, 4 pigeons were reinforced for discriminating different displays, created from aggregated differences in element color or shape, from uniform displays, in which all elements were identical. Discrimination of these 2 display types was readily acquired by the pigeons when they were required to locate and peck the contrasting target region of the different displays. The pigeons showed high levels of discrimination transfer to novel texture stimuli both during acquisition and in 2 subsequent transfer tests. The results suggest that pigeons may be able to learn a generalized same-different concept when promoted by the use of large numbers of multielement stimuli during training.