Relational Learning in Pigeons?

Two experiments investigated whether discrimination learning and transposition by pigeons were facilitated by the opportunity to compare rectangles differing in luminance or stars differing in number of vertices. In Experiment 1, one group was trained with stimuli from the same dimension appearing simultaneously on each trial, but for a second group such stimuli appeared on separate trials. The opportunity to compare stimuli from the same dimension on a single trial facilitated the learning of the luminance discrimination but not of the stars discrimination. Such comparison also resulted in greater luminance but not greater stars transposition. Using a different training procedure, Experiment 2 confirmed that the opportunity for comparison facilitated a luminance discrimination. The results for the star discrimination are entirely consistent with “absolute” theories of discrimination learning; but the results for the luminance discrimination suggest some kind of “relational” learning. Given the difference between the star and luminance discriminations, a low-level, sensory theory of relational learning seems most consistent with the data.

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