Multidimensional visual discrimination by pigeons O Vyazovska1, Y Teng2, D Pavlenko3, E Wasserman2 |
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1Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine, Ukraine |
| To how many visual dimensions can organisms simultaneously attend? To find out, we trained pigeons (Columba livia) on a go/no go discrimination to peck only 1 of 16 visual stimuli created from all possible combinations of four binary dimensions: brightness (dim/bright), size (large/small), line orientation (vertical/horizontal), and shape (circle/square). Half of the pigeons had SSVL (square, small, vertical, light gray) as the rewarded stimulus (S+) and the other half had CLHD (circle, large, horizontal, dark gray) as the rewarded stimulus (S+). We recorded pecking during the 15 s that each stimulus was presented on each training trial. Training continued until pigeons responded to all 15 nonrewarded stimuli (S-s) at rates less than 15% to the S+. All pigeons acquired the discrimination, suggesting that they attended to all four dimensions of the multidimensional stimuli. Learning rate was similar for all four dimensions. The more dimensions along which the S-s differed from the S-, the faster was discrimination learning, suggesting an additive benefit from increasing perceptual disparities of the S-s from the S+. Many pigeons showed strong signs of attentional tradeoffs among the four dimensions during discrimination learning. Our new discrimination learning procedure shows considerable promise for studying selective attention in animals. |
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